HTC Profits Drop By 79%

An anonymous reader writes "HTC is the world's fifth largest phone maker, but it's starting to feel some serious pressure from giants like Samsung and Apple. HTC's third quarter net income dropped 79% from the previous quarter, and total revenues were down 48%. 'Sales of HTC's flagship One series, which debuted in February, are trailing off as Apple and Samsung spend four to six times more on marketing to ensure the iPhone 5 and the Galaxy SIII dominate the market, while strongly subsidizing their older models ... HTC's share of the global smartphone market by shipments fell to 5.8% in the second quarter from 10.7% a year earlier, according to Bloomberg. The company released its first Windows Phone 8 models in September, its most high-profile pre-Christmas launch, but Microsoft's operating system has yet to establish itself as a serious third player after Google's Android and Apple's iOS.'"

Re:GOOD !! THEY BREAK UN SANCTIONS !!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have trouble faulting a company from Taiwan for disregarding the UN, as the UN insists on disregarding Taiwan.

It's because they removed the SD Card

[Anonymous Coward]

The HTC Vivid was the last AT&T phone that had a MicroSD slot. The One X variants and subsequent models do not.

Of course, the carriers hate SD slots, because they would rather you eat up all of your data accessing your stuff in the "cloud." Google is also all-to-happy to remove the SD slot for the same reason, because they want to access your data, too, and it's easier for them if you're storing it on their hard drives.

I absolutely will not buy a phone or tablet that does not have an SD slot. If they all stop offering them, I'll just keep limping along on my Inspire until it dies, and then I'll go get a prepaid dumb phone.

Smart phones are fun toys, but they are useless unless I can store my music and videos directly on them.

Pressure from competition? yeah right

[mybeat]

Maybe HTC should stop making stupid design decisions like a non removable battery and no microSD expansion slot? Owned original HTC Desire and still love it, despite browsing Slashdot on it was soo slow.

Haha

[binarylarry]

Don't worry HTC, those Microsoft phones will get you back in action!

I've bought HTC phones exclusively since Android came out but I've grown tired of all the issues that popup. Plus HTC tends to be douchey about releasing source code and drivers, so my next phone will be from elsewhere.

Yep! Good riddance!

[Evtim]

My first and so far last smartphone is HTC Desire. What a piece of @#$%#!

First, the menu buttons on the bottom stop working after 1 year regular use (3 out of 3 - the phones of myself, my wife and a friend)

Second, and much more frustrating - no system updates. Zero, nada,zip! I am still running Android 2.2 ?!? Their proprietary overlay of Android is utter crap, I have no control over the device (unless I root, but damn it why bother - I should get unlocked phone from the start), I cannot remove shit like Facebook applications, stock market update (WTF?!?) and so on....sometimes the phone just stops responding because it is busy running....itself

Now, I'll admit the above is not necessarily a flaw of HTC only, but come on...Overall I am utterly disappointed by the whole smartphone thingy. I expected a small PC in my pocket and all I got is locked, slow, power hungry piece of shit, that spends 80% of its power running itself... and no, I am not going Apple because of this (different set of crap IMO) but I just might "devolve" to dumb phone again.

New slogan - "dumb phones are for smart people, smart phones are for dummies". Please, spread it around - we just might convince enough people to stop falling for the hype and get those companies in line...oh, forgot boycott does not work in our economic paradigm. Well, forget it...

Re:Done with HTC

[medcalf]

Actually, I SSH into servers from my iPhone frequently. If the virtual keyboard works for you in other contexts, it works just fine for SSH. (iSSH, the program I use, has a couple of handy controls floating on the screen that give access to things like an ESC key and arrow keys that the virtual keyboard itself lacks. I tried out a different terminal program for a while that used gestures to do the same thing, but it just wasn't as easy to use of a solution.) So bottom line is, virtual keyboards don't have any intrinsic issues with SSH use for common system administration tasks.

HTC should make some more models

[alen]

Apple has the iphone
Samsung has the Galaxy S3
verizon has droids

people know these names. HTC used to release a new phone a month on different carriers under different names with slightly different specs. diluted the brand because people didn't know what they were buying

Re:HTC should make some more models

[Antimatter3009]

I think you've got it more right than anyone else here. Features like an SD card and removable battery are nice, but very few people care. Just look at how well the iPhone does with neither. What really makes a difference is how you sell your product. Samsung and Apple sell the exact* same phone across all carriers. Then they advertise that single phone straight to consumers, knowing that the carrier they're on doesn't matter. HTC sells the One X exclusively on AT&T. They sell Evos on Sprint. They sell Droid Incredibles on Verizon. They can't advertise a single product line to consumers, leaving them pretty much reliant on the carriers to push their phones for them. What do they expect?

When people think Apple, they think iPhone. Samsung, they think Galaxy S. HTC, they think... well, probably nothing. None of their product lines have a strong brand identity, so people won't ask for them. And when people won't ask for you product, how do you plan to sell any when you're competing against the products people will ask for?

* I realize some internal components are different, but as far as the average consumer is concerned, they're exactly the same.