By 
Hipster trolls, Robert Downey Jr., top-ranked Android handsets — no matter what HTC does, the company just can’t seem to win. The report is in on the OEM’s 3rd quarter 2013 financials and HTC execs and analysts are once again seeing red. For the most recent quarter, HTC posted a net loss of NT$2.97 billion ($101 million), well over initial estimates that had the company losing NT$1.71 billion on average.
Overall operating loss for the quarter was NT$3.5 billion after NT$47 billion in sales. The loss was again over analyst projections, while total sales fell short of the expected mark. The mounting losses, which have seen HTC’s stock value drop by 80 percent over the past two years, are perplexing. More acutely, HTC’s inability to turn things around is what has most scratching their heads.
The manufacturer appears to be making many of the right moves on the surface, releasing quality devices, putting a hefty amount of advertising behind them, and reducing superfluous expenses. But the formula isn’t working, for whatever reason. While the HTC One was well received, its release was overshadowed by Samsung’s Galaxy S4. As the rival continues to increase its stranglehold on the Android market, HTC continues to lose value, and the Taiwanese company can only do that for so long before drastic actions will need to be taken.
[via Bloomberg]
HTC needs a new idea to separate them from Samsung..
I have such an idea but who would pay me for an idea.
Right, because those guys that go to business school for 8+ years need your business idea.
That’s the problem , listen too the masses not the asses.
I’m not saying that the guys at the helm of HTC are doing it right, but I’m a little apprehensive to believe that a guy on Phandroid via Disqus has the answer to completely pull HTC out of the red and go on to profit… for a small fee, of course.
That’s what I mean , they should focus on the masses .
Exactly, keep it simple and satisfy your customer base. The problem is HTC doesn’t know what direction they want to go in. At first they pioneered as a developer friendly, all option OEM and now they’re copying the business model of a certain fruit co, with limited options and devices locked down tighter than Ft. Knox. HTC do you even know who you are?
And how’s that been working for them?
Come on Htc turn it around I’m supporting you the Htc one is an awesome device and I’m waiting anxiously for the One max.
Dang!!! Cmon HTC pull it together!!! Rooting for you guys!
Well at least we had one day without HTC bad news…
HTC got my support. They need to get their advertising down and have a stellar device next for next year like the HTC One.
That and going back to pumping devices out the wazoo with all types of specs and ranges for places all over the world. I seem to remember the moment they went from making all types of devices to nailing the whole “1 Major premium phone per year” category like apple has dominated, they went to crap. They made a drastic change in the way they made money, and they barely had advertising before.
I actually like the new direction HTC is going, they just made the mistake of waiting too long to release the Mini, and they have yet to announce the Max. Pumping out a truck load of devices is profitable to them, but they would be taking a step backwards by doing so.
Stop trying to copy Apple and give the give the people what they want like edge to edge display, removable battery and storage options and maybe HTC can get back on track. I was a loyal HTC customer from the G1 up to the One X but now I have a SGS4 and I don’t plan on going back unless htc starts listening to their customer base
Google’s phones dont even have removable batteries and storage options…. the vast majority of customers dont give a damn about those things
Well I’m one of the vast majority and I give a damn.
No, you’re in the minority. You (and others like you) are just more vocal about it. Walk into any carrier store and ask the people browsing for new phones/plans/accessories if they care about removable batteries or SD card options, and most (but not all) will give you a blank stare. I mean no offense, but it’s the truth. Some people don’t even know their batteries are/are not removable or that they have an SD card in their phone.
I disagree, I think you’re underestimating the buying public. Smartphones are like computers now and your almost every household has one. Don’t know why it’s the “in” thing now to start making excuses for HTC, it’s so “Apple” like.
If you couple this with lack of updates, it’s the reasons why they are failing woefully
1. I’m not sure if you were stating that I was “making excuses for HTC”, but just to be clear, I’m not. I’m not making excuses for anyone, just pointing out a perception.
2. The only time the majority of people even care about the SD card is when they either need more storage, or are upgrading/swapping handsets. A lot of the manufacturer skins have made the latter unnecessary with “easy” migration tools (or at least, I recall a few handsets having this option in the past).
3. Likewise, the only time people care about a removable battery is when they actually want to get an extended/larger battery (which most people (besides the “power users”) don’t), or need to do a battery pull because the software isn’t working right.
4. What was your point of bringing up the comparison between computers and smartphones? A lot of people have computers, but that doesn’t mean they know how to use them. I still see people not knowing what to do when a program on a Windows machine goes on the fritz (Ctrl+Alt+Del > Force close), even though that functionality has been around for literally a decade and a half.
I guess we can agree to disagree but I’m curious to know why you think HTC is in the position they’re in now?
I really don’t care, but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say not enough advertising. For every HTC ad I’ve seen (at least on TV, I have AdBlock on my computer), there’s been probably at least 4 Samsung ads. While I’ve never used any HTC products, I’m sure they have some really great features, and I’ve never really seen any advertising around the product(s) or the things they can do. Now, maybe this is “selective viewing” on my part, I don’t know.
And just so you know, I currently have a 32 GB Galaxy Nexus. I thought I would hate not having an SD card, but I really don’t mind all that much, for the reasons I stated above. I have virtually all my music, quite a few photos and video recordings, not to mention 2 or 3 full fledged movies, and at least 2 GB worth of apps, and still have a few GB’s of space left.
I also disagree with this. I started with HTC with the G1, and was a loyal customer until the first Galaxy series showed up. I jumped ship to Samsung because they took the kitchen sink approach. Whatever I wanted, I could have! Great camera for the time, forward facing camera, sweet screen tech, replaceable battery and SD, and video out through the headset jack! It was a dream, and now I own the SGS3, which is equal to every task I’ve thrown at it. I’ll admit that I’m in a rarer bracket because I’m a power user, and I have the screen on over 4 hours a day due to work, so I need a phone that’s fast, versatile, and has replaceable batteries. However, many of the early HTC fans are like me…more tech savvy (as we were Android early adopters).
My verdict…HTC lost its base by making lots of niche phones that were locked down and were carrier specific, right at the same time that Samsung started creating the phone for everyone. Sure, the Evo was nice, but only for Sprint. They then doubled down on stupid by shafting their customers on updates and producing some terrible iterations of Sense. By now, they are close to having it right (Universal carrier, phone with lots of options) but their locked down bootloaders hurt them in the hacker crowd, and the lack of battery/storage options does the rest.
Well said, this is exactly how I feel as well. As an early adopter I feel like I was abandoned by HTC so I moved on. Simple
Replaceable batteries are a necessity on these phones because it’s just too hard to make it through a day without it. Sure, I can pack a plug-in battery stick, but who wants to use their phone with that hanging off of it?!?!
A spare battery fits nicely behind a billfold and even better in a purpose, and takes you 0-100% in seconds. Virtually no down time, and nothing hanging off of your phone, upsetting its balance. It’s so simple my MOM and my brother do the same thing.
Wrong. Well, maybe about the SD card to some extent, but smartphones kill battery, and having an extra one lying around to pop in is something my 60 year old MOM does.
iphones are the most popular phones in the world and they dont have a removable battery…
Seriously, that’s the primary reason I don’t own them. And that popularity is being challenged, as the sgs3 beat out the iphone 3 months of last year.
you honestly think its because the iPhone didnt have an sd card/removable batt?
You don’t beat Apple by being like them. If you do that, people will just get the real thing.
umm yeah Im just gonna pretend like Samsung didnt get sued for copying Apple crap.
Besides, no sd card slot/removable battery isnt something Id call a feature of iPhones. Noone at HTC said “ok, Apple isnt using this, we arent either!”
It’s usually the lowlifes like this to want a removable battery, so they can fill the sd card with p*rn. Watch it all day long, then switch the battery and do it all over again
Nope, I use my phone at work and need at least 4 hours with screen on every day. There’s not a stock smartphone battery out there in the Android world that can accommodate that. But a second battery works perfectly.
Can’t you bring a charger instead of a second battery? Don’t they have power outlets where you work?
I just bring a usb cable with me and plug it in my work comp when I need to charge or with an ac charger can get quick juice updates in minimal time.
Ofc this depends on the kind of job you have, but if you need it on a lot at work I assume you have the time to plug it in to charge.
That’s not always an option. Look I work out in the oilfield in West Texas (I’m talking 16 to 18 hr days) and for the most part I’m always at a remote location with an edge signal or GPRS @ best. I don’t always have the ability to pop a charger in or stream media via the cloud.
I constantly need my phone on me, as I need to relay information to numerous 3rd party sources.
I don’t know why it’s so hard to understand that some people require these options on a daily basis.
It is not hard to understand. Hard to understand is that they are saving costs by not making it replaceable and doing so impacts a minimal amount of people, so for them it is an obvious choice.
One, chargers and spare battery packs are bulky in my pocket. Two, a charger ties me down, and half the use of my phone is going to a location to take a picture of the product. The battery packs are a little better, but make it off kilter. Finally, LI-Ion batteries are only good for about 600-times plugging them in. If you go to work, plug it in, unplug it once or twice, go home, plug it in…you get the picture. You’re probably plugging it in at least twice a day, gusting up to 4 times a day. Your SEALED battery will be severely life-impacted in a year.
Maybe if HTC supported their phones better with updates, customers wouldn’t be so eager to jump ship. The HTC One S is not even 18months old and they have decided not to release 4.2 for it even though they announced that it would get the update earlier in the year!
I was under the impression the One S was receiving the update to 4.3 (I want to say by the end of the year), although that may be the last update it’ll see.
I just checked, apparently the One S came with either the S3 or S4 CPU depending on region. Qualcomm isn’t providing 4.2/4.3 drivers for the S3, so there shall be no OTAs.
There’s rumor that the S4 model might see 4.2 on HTCDev.
S4 in the US, and yeah I remember the Qualcomm fiasco… Good point
> if HTC supported their phones better with updates
I think being the first one to push a 4.3 update (to the One) is a good first start.
As for the One S, it’s Qualcomm dropping support that is the issue, not HTC.
Not so fast my friend… What about their devices that are a year old? Specifically my EVO 4G LTE… We need to be updated from the 4.1.1 we’re stuck on. I’m tired of this crap, and this may very well be my last HTC phone. HTC needs to support ALL of their devices, period!
The EVO series are (mostly) custom built for Sprint. While I agree HTC should support it as long as they can, I don’t hold carrier-custom units against them from an update support standpoint. If Sprint doesn’t want/ask for the update, I would put it at lower priority, too.
As for the 4G LTE, you did get the ICS -> JB 4.1 update, and a bug fix update this week, so it isn’t completely ignored.
Good news, everybody!
https://twitter.com/JasonMacHTC/status/386284246521769984
Bout dang time they paid attention to this phone!
Sell me a One for $200……..
Sell your mother for $200
She’s been dead for over 25 years, you’re welcome to skull f&*# her if you wish!
HTC better get on that dual boot device that Microsoft wants.
beg google to make a nexus device…problem solved
I don’t think a Nexus can save any company. Btw I think HTC phones are more sold than any Nexus phone.
Guarantee..!!!
Kill Peter Chao (CEO of HTC)so that HTC can live. His stupid decisions are bringing the company to its knees. It’s time for a complete overhaul.
Chase him around with pitchforks and torches, while screaming out different acronyms that we can come up that starts with the letters from HTC?
Or go stealth mode, sneak into his house, hold him hostage, and demand a chrome-plated HTC One Max?
Or better yet, just get the hell out of any forum you are currently participating in, ’cause you are either a troll with nothing better to do, or someone who actually thinks this way. Either way, you need help, and possibly a hug.
You need to lose your virginity. Silly monkey
Lack of updates, support and transparency prompted me to turn away from HTC. I was a big supporter and had an Eris, Incredible and DInc 2, but outright lies about ICS updates and support for the DInc 2 soured me on the HTC brand for good.
Definition of lie: an intentionally false statement.
They decided not to upgrade to ICS due to hardware limitations. It wouldn’t have been as stable to put ICS on, say, an HTC Desire HD.
I had a desire HD for a while, the thunderbolt which had the same spec as the desire HD so I don’t know why the desire HD apparently couldn’t handle Ics but thunderbolt could. There update support for there older devices have been poor, take the sensation it came out at the same time as the s2 but the s2 got jb where as sensation stopped at ics and then the situation with the one she where only some models get the update to jb. Imo HTC have been all over the place and lost a lot of trust with consumers and it’s only now that they are in serious trouble are they making changes.
I’m hoping they hurry up and release the Maxx. I’m in the market for a phablet and the Note 3 is looking awfully good. HTC should have been all over the Note 3 release to try and steal some of Samsung’s thunder. The phablet market is only so large and the Note 3 is going to take a huge amount of that market away from HTC in the next couple of weeks. Come on HTC. Competition is good for everyone and we need more companies than just Samsung being profitable selling Android phones.
TLDY – Hurry up and release the Maxx already
Microsoft finally will buy HTC… what a shame.
They just bought Nokia doubt it
HTC is lacking money from Android phones to Microsoft because patent licenses and its total cost probably is not too much for Microsoft.
I personally hope Google buys HTC. Google plus a quality OEM would make awesome devices. We have yet to see such a combo.
Yes, I personally believe HTC is better than Motorola, and they could produce more quality phones under Google. I’m not sure if Google would spend all that money buying them though.
Im glad you got my subtle slight against Motorolla. Lol
Google has a lot of money to make high quality phones through Motorola.
What about Motorola? Google bought it and nothing happened. Buying HTC won’t be different.
Should have read down a bit, it was a subtle dig at Motorolla not being a quality OEM. Meaning I think HTC would be a better partner.
Damn homie, in high school u was the man homie.
the f@*k happen to u.
Lol @the RDJ thumbnail
Michael Lee: HTC at least formally announced that ICS could not be applied to Desire HD. As far as I know, they never made that pronouncement for the DInc 2. Thunderbolt and Incredible S ICS updates were encouraging news for DInc 2 owners… But cryptic and conflicting social media posts about update status was all we got after nearly a year of publicly saying it would happen.
Not releasing the One on Verizon when it first launched (when it was relevant) was the dumbest thing the company couldve done. I don’t care what the reason was. Now a big chunk of those customers have galaxies or iPhone. What the hell would be the point in “upgrading” to a One now? Stupid. And like others have said they totally missed their window with the Maxx. People don’t wait for the most part, and the Note 3 will have cannibalized the potential Maxx user base by the time it comes out. No reason to feel sorry for this company, it deserves to die. Someone else will take its place and try to compete with Samsung, likely learning from HTC ‘s mistakes along the way.
> Not releasing the One on Verizon when it first launched (when it was relevant) was the dumbest thing the company couldve done. I don’t care what the reason was.
It may not have been their choice. From what I heard, the DNA was still selling well when the One came out. Verizon may have wanted to stick with what was selling / what they already had in their warehouse.
@JaylisJayP:disqus @chadvincent:disqus i agree with both of you. but i stand with josh that was htc’s hottest phone EVER. and for it to come out on the largest network how many months later? they were probably better off not even launching it on verizon. they shouldve just came out with another model for verizon and not even come out with the mini. tsk tsk.
What Verizon doesn’t order from HTC doesn’t get shipped to them.
HTC didn’t hold the phone back from Verizon.
I guess Verizon knows better then. Verizon is probably disappointed with the “no-removable card and battery.”
Clever but false.
Verizon carried the Butterfly variant first – the Droid DNA, no removable card and battery and only 16 GB.
And then delayed the upgrade to the One – but they have it now.
Maybe if they do go belly up they can release the dev unlocks for all the Verizon models. Not that I want them to go under. My VZW One is hands down the best phone I’ve eve had the pleasure of using. I actually even enjoy Sense over a friend’s vanilla dev edition. I’m just trying to find my own personal silver lining.
I hope their profits pick up since they finally released the one on Verizon.
If there’s a sequal to the One next year, they should release it 2-3 months before Samsung releases the GS5, so they don’t steal each other’s thunder again.
And making bigger phone with smaller display compare to other flagship phones is another deal breaker for some users, and also the bottom bezel of HTC One must be equal to the top bezel, and the trend now is almost bezel less. This tip is friendly suggestion from me, to make your phone success.
problems for HTC include 2 things. 1 no decent mid-market phone. 2. they come out with a great product 2 steps behind everyone. HTC one is cool but its not waterproof.
I would hate to see HTC go the way of the Do-Do Bird. May be HTC should fire their overzealous analysts to come up with more realistic profit and loss projections. May be Google should acquire a portion of the company?
Provide removable battery, and sd slot to your flagship phones. Those two are one key benefactor for android phones, look what Samsung did.
This is not apple, and apple it’s already established, and we’ll popular, but it seems you follow the footstep of apple for not including those two feature of the phone’s. Sometimes you must sit and think what consumers want/need, or whatever you called it before you launch the new gadget. Good luck, I’m still waiting for 4.3 jb update for U. S. Carrier version.
I was about to say the same exact words.. u beat me by 8 hrs.
I won’t buy a flagship phone without replaceable batteries and expandable storage. Not sure how many would agree with me, but I was once an HTC customer. Now I’m a happy Samsung user and it would take a lot to entice me to switch.
I agree 100% I used to be an HTC fanboi until they followed the product scheme of Apple. I am now with Samsung.
You’re obviously happy with Shamesung to be commenting on HTC articles
HTC main competition is Samsung, not Apple. They focused on the wrong competitor.
I would happily choose an HTC device over Samsung any day if they have the same specs.
Idiots should try this: make HTC Two (or whatever they’re going to call it, if they survive) and make two versions: 1) the way they made the One and 2) basically the same way but with removable battery and SD card slot. I bet any amount of money the second version of it will out sell the first version 2 to 1. Who agrees?!
Unless option one has less than 32GB of storage and can’t last a day of average use, then I’d never even consider option two, to be quite honest. Give me solid construction over a removable battery/SD card anyday. I’d never even use the latter if I had the choice.
You could have both. Expandable storage and removable battery is a big issue for international customers and it’s not impossibleto a solid phone with that options. Even htcHTC have a One varivariant with SD slot in one Chinese carrier
I agree, a removable memory card and battery won’t hurt…
However, HTC has made phones with such feature recently.
Planning to replace my One X with a Desire 500/600 or better yet Butterfly S, just for the removable part… but i still satisfied with the One X :
Well at least they finally announced the EVO LTE will be updated to 4.3 with Sense 5 by years end. Good job HTC! Finally they do something good for a product that’s barely a year old!
I feel like theirs more to what’s going on than what their reports say. What if there’s some massive Enron embezzlement going on? …idk probably not. I wish they’d post a good quarter sheesh.
The One vs. The Note 3 / S4 …. Both have amazing high end points to them. HTC’s One feels solid, sounds amazing, zero-gap construction. Even uses those double membrane mics (totally kick ass). Note 3 / S4 has removable parts, decent construction, amoled screen. To me its a toss up.
I just can’t see how the One couldn’t have pulled them out of their mess they’re in I guess. Its just SO good. And works DAMN WELL with CM10.2 nightlies.
It is a nice phone. Oh my gosh!! It’s that marketing. Samsung already took that grasp. It’s going to be hard for HTC to come back from this. Hmm…
This couldn’t actually be happening, could it? I mean, the answer is SOOO SIMPLE! Hell, every other commenter on Phandroid “knows” what HTC should be doing… (has something to do with unlocked bootloaders, right?)
YEAH… RIGHT!
It’s usually the lowlife Samsung users that want a removable battery, so they can fill the sd card with p*rn. Watch it all day long, then switch the battery and do it all over again. I would much prefer a premium uni body design, with more internal storage and a bigger battery.
Or maybe it’s people whose jobs take them to remote locations where they might not always have access to cloud services or power management options. #dumbass
Where does your job send you, Africa? You chat rubbish son.
Yes, continue to make yourself look foolish.
racist.
in London, supposedly “the capital of Europe”, You cannot begin to use your phone on the train/tube.
I live in hong kong, supposedly the international capital of the world, i have no signal right now as we speak. there are things called hills etc. which don’t allow 4g lte everywhere you go.
Are you kidding? You sound ridiculous.
No, you don’t have more internal storage or a bigger battery AND you don’t have SD and replaceable battery
Samsung S4 has the bigger battery, and can mount SD card.
But i still hate samsung phones for their bloatware, gimmicks, and cheap ass undurable materials, just for cutting costs.
I hope the Next Big Thing isn’t plastic.
I think it’s time for HTC to release the HTC One Max!
When my HTC Android phone bricked, I faced lousy service and cost of repairing from HTC service Centre as much as a new phone. That time I promised myself never to buy an HTC. All those ads and new devices fail to impress me because of the bad experience I had. Even if I were to forget my bad experience, then all new HTC phones come with built-in batteries, you can’t replace like Samsung (i use 2-3 batteries a day). Also, it is difficult to root am HTC phone. If I was fine with all this, I would have rather gone for an iPhone. I love my Samsung Galaxy Note 2.
Excuse me? Let me tell you about my HORRID experience with my E4GT (GS2). Okay, so that removable battery died in like a year. I bought 3 batteries within the 2 years because they kept going bad.
A bricked phone? How’d you brick it? You do know bricked means, doesn’t respond, turn on, or anything. Like if the phone turns on, then it’s not bricked.
My friend’s Note 2 dies like super fast. Like he NEEDS a 2nd battery. Some battery life. Oh, let me guess, the screen right? No. I don’t think so. Not cutting it.
I’m sorry, but from my experience, removable batteries are a waste of money. They ALWAYS die fast. Like WTF!? And being bricked doesn’t cut it from me. Unless you just had a bad misfortune. LoL!!
/r/rant
What experience?
Your FRIEND had a Note 2.
You have no experience.
Go rant elsewhere.
There is a reason why I put that in a different paragraph. It was up to your common sense to understand that a different point was being stated that still helped my original point.
But this post is about 2 days old, so I don’t think it’s any reason to really continue this argument.
My point is my removable battery experience and what I’ve seen has been bad. I don’t want to waste money on buying batteries. That’s annoying.
If you don’t mind that, then that’s fine. I, for one, prefer non-removable. They seem to be more reliable. I’ll be able to tell that if after 6 months if my phone starts shutting down and not being able to hold a charge. Yes. It got that bad. LoL!!
Hmm… Maybe I shouldn’t be drinking right now? =.3
Samsung fan boy.
There are plenty of perfectly good reasons not to get an iphone. Every person I have talked to has mentioned at LEAST one of these. Let me list a few here:
No removable battery.
No sd expansion.
Easily cracked screens.
Twice the price of comparible phones.
Not open source.
Not nearly as many free apps…
Need I continue?
As for the original discussion, the 80% drop in stock really only indicates a loss in faith of the investors, am I wrong? I have a feeling that one of the reasons htc is hurting is because the number of consumers looking for phones has dropped. Think about the number of phones on the market, and the number of consumers who can afford 300 dollar phones…
This is pretty crazy when you think about it….everything HTC did within the last year including releasing their most popular handset and they still lost almost $3 billion dollars!!! How is that even possible for a company to do…don’t you need to MAKE money to stay afloat or are they hoping that maybe next year is their year and they make $300 billion and it evens out? I don’t get it…HTC made a better phone than Samsung but they just couldn’t get enough people to buy in. Too bad. My lil brother got the HTC One…amazing phone, great speakers and screen just needs a better battery.
my Aunty Mila recently got Audi Q5 Hybrid by
working parttime from a macbook… here are the findings Jam20.ℂom