As expected, HTC’s first month of Q3 finished with a 45 percent drop in revenue when compared to July of 2011. HTC’s unaudited numbers show that the company managed to rake in $835 million, though no details are available regarding its profits or the number of units shipped.
HTC has been struggling to keep up with Samsung and Apple, but the steep decline in revenue is only amplified by the fact that HTC’s Q3 revenues in 2011 grew 93% from 2010. The drop in 2012 essentially puts the company back in the spot it was at two years ago. The only difference in the market is that Samsung is now the strongest Android OEM while HTC is playing catch up.
We expect the remainder of Q3 will be more of the same, but things should start to level out for HTC once Q4 rolls around. What do you think HTC needs to do in order to regain a bit of market share to help boost the bottom line?
Source: HTC
Make it possible to change battery en put a microsd card in the smartphone.
Make commercials that promote the Tegra 3 processor and make more usefull software that can use the power of the tegra without draining the battery with useless lighteffects.
And go to 5 inch or/and put small but good functional gamebuttons on the edge.
Strike a exclusief deal with sony and nintendo and put the psx and ds games on the device.
Make your device faster.
Sell addons for the device.for low prices but with good profit like for example a keyboard.
I’m not surprised to read about HTC’s dipping profits for 2012, especially when the company is directly compared to Samsung.
Samsung covers everything from budget phones to its award winning, flagship SGS III, while HTC mainly caters to the smartphone arena.
Samsung’s low end phones appeal to countries where most of their population can’t afford luxury smartphones (like Brazil) and to consumers who aren’t tech savvy and only need to know how to make and receive calls (like my aged mom for instance, lol) 😉
For Samsung, their cheap mobile phones constitute the bread and butter of their overall mobile phone sales, more than enough to compensate for any of their smartphone models that didn’t garner enough sales.
Since HTC doesn’t make budget handsets, it misses a potentially large chunk of the low end phone market. Their upper ranged handsets (from the original Sensation and above) have had an equal share of hits and misses, beginning with patchy quality control issues to slow firmware updates. Many people are starting to believe that HTC rushes their products to the market without testing them out thoroughly, leaving the testing to their actual customers.
Let’s not forget HTC’s bungling and costly partnership Beats Audio, which was a totally unnecessary co-branding venture. To add insult to injury, HTC later withdrew the Beats branded earphones that were initially bundled with models like the Sensation XE with Beats Audio (mine came with standard cheap earbuds).
Then there’s their ambitious Flyer tablet which didn’t really “fly” despite its namesake and the bigger Jetstream model which was only sold to select markets.
The Flyer had the potential for sales but it was hampered by a lackluster customer after sales support (OTA updates) and a rather high price tag compared to Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. Mostly only HTC fans are aware of the Flyer and the Jetstream, while Samsung had already released several iterations of their ultra-successful Galaxy Tab models.
Finally, there’s the sensitive subject of advertising budget. Samsung has a very deep wallet for advertising and they’re an official sponsor for the London Olympics 2012. Here in Malaysia, I’ve seen mostly Samsung and LG Optimus commercials on TV from time to time (especially since the SGS II came out last year), while HTC had never bothered to advertise.
Seriously? If HTC wishes to regain its glory in the smartphone market it has to stop thinking like HTC and more like Samsung. ‘Nuff said.