HTC Losing Ground Faster Than RIM or Nokia 280
zacharye writes "How bad is HTC's current tailspin? So bad it makes Nokia look like a growth company. HTC's handset volume declined by -43% in the autumn quarter vs. Nokia's -23% volume decline. This is very interesting because HTC is using Android, the world's most popular smartphone OS, that is powering 40% annualized growth among its vendors. Nokia is limping along with an unholy mix of the obsolete Symbian platform, the moribund S40 feature phone platform and a niche OS called Windows Phone."
The iPhone effect? (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, so HTC took a 43% hit on total units shipped in the Autumn quarter...the same quarter that the iPhone 5 came out. How heavy a hit did they have in Summer and Spring? It's happened before that when a new iPhone comes out, that's pretty much all anyone buys for a short while. Nokia's decline, on the other hand, has been going on consistently for some years now. A 23% drop for them means, what...that they delivered 23 less phones than the previous quarter?
Re:Why is that "interesting"? (Score:5, Interesting)
While shopping for a new phone during the summer nearly every store tried to talk me out of HTC
I had researched extensively and found the HTC One V had the best camera on the market for a phone under $200 (with no contract), and was small in size (contrary to the current trend I prefer small phones) and had Android 4 out of the box.
I walked out of one store because the pushed samsung so hard, and out of another store since they no longer carried HTC. Only at the third store did I find the phone.
Incidentally this phone's camera is amazing if you're a photographer and like to tinker. It gives you true autofocus. Exposure control to plus or minus two stops, and a mode that brackets exposure (-1, 0, +1) and puts the three images together to give high contrast scenes beautifully smooth detail.
Re:Why is that "interesting"? (Score:5, Interesting)
I seriously considered the One X, but the lack of removable battery and storage put me off and i got the Galaxy S3 instead. It's a shame, because i'm sure the One X is a better phone in many ways.
I went through exactly the same thought processes, and came to the same conclusion. The HTC One X with 32GB was about the same price as the Samsung Galaxy S3 with 16GB (the small price difference was not an issue). The HTC was rated as having a display at least as good as the Galaxy, but the HTC Sense interface was a minor put-off. The killer in my decision making was that the HTC has no SDHC card slot and is lumbered with an unreplaceable battery, while the Samsung has both SDHC and a replaceable battery. I bought the Samsung and a 32GB card, which together cost more than the HTC.
The other dumb thing HTC did was discontinue phones with keyboards. My daughter has a Desire Z, and probably won't replace it for a long time because there is nothing on the market to compete with it. If any phone were available with a good display and a keyboard, I'd probably have bought one, even if its price were higher than the Galaxy S3.
If anyone from HTC is reading this, they have a few things to take home and beat into whatever remains from their marketing department: (i) expandable storage is life or death for a phone, (ii) a replaceable battery is very very attractive, (iii) physical keyboards get customer loyalty.
Re:Why is that "interesting"? (Score:5, Interesting)
I went through the same evaluation and looked at the fact that i had never even once swapped batteries in any phone I've ever owned.
I found a $50 external battery pack that can recharge the phone four times on a single 5 hour recharge. Then i found the phone gets 18 hours of run time on a single charge, so the number of times I would actually need the battery pack were vanishingly small.
So I dismissed all the swappable battery posers, bought the HTC One X, and it is the best phone I've ever seen.
Battery swapping is seldom necessary, and when you do need more power an external battery pack make way more sense. It has a lot of other uses.
HTC is on lean times because it doesn't have the marketing clout of Samsung. Not because their phones are inferior.
Re:Why is that "interesting"? (Score:4, Interesting)
In my opinion, HTC has dramatically fallen out of favor among the enthusiast community due to heavy lockdown and closed source drivers. This is in fact the reason I have sworn off ever buying another HTC phone again. That might be spilling over to the regular consumers.
In my case it has, because I've recommended to everybody that I have talked to android about to stay away from HTC.