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The HTC One M8 is tasked with helping dig HTC out of the deep hole they’ve gotten themselves into, but it doesn’t seem to be doing quite as well as HTC would hope. The company posted their early unaudited results for the month of May, and they’re down not just month-over-month, but year-over-year, as well.
They saw a decrease of about 4.6% from April to May, which can be explained a couple of different ways. For starters, the HTC One M8 launched in April and the surge of sales helped HTC spike to an increase of about 36% over March. When you consider that number it was still a pretty good month for HTC, though we’re sure they would have liked to keep the increases rolling.
More alarming are the year-over-year numbers, where HTC lost about NT$7 billion (around $233 million). That is a drop of nearly 30%. HTC expects to meet their Q2 expectations despite those numbers, though they’ll need to get moving if they want to keep the revenue rolling in.
They’ve already made a few different moves to make that happen, including today’s revelation of a more affordable version of the HTC One M8. It’s clad in plastic and comes with internals that are slightly toned down, and that should result in a cheaper price tag for those who can’t quite hit the high-end budget HTC’s targeting. They’ve also committed to more consistent mid-range and entry-level devices, many of which have already been released in select markets.
HTC will also need to bounce back from a terrible marketing campaign that cost them billions of dollars and gained them little to no traction or mind share. Robert Downey Jr was cool in Iron Man, but he’s not quite good enough to sell a mobile phone, apparently. We’re obviously rooting for the company to do well because it would be a shame to see one less major competitor in the market.
[via HTC]
Good bye HTC.
I don’t care what anyone else says, I respect htc for how far they have made it. Name one other company that only makes phones with any measurable marketshare that are still up and running today? All these other OEMS like sony, samsung and lg have a huge advantage because they are involved with so many other products and markets that could easily help offset some of their costs in their mobile devision but not htc, all they do is make phones. The reality is that eventually htc will be bought out by someone, but they have done well considering they don’t have any other product or services to help offset loses in their mobile division like sony, lg and others have. So props to htc and hopefully someone reputable can step in and buy them out so that they can then compete on a much larger scale.
Maybe Lenovo will buy them. They do buy failing brands after all. ;)
Well they shoulda diversified then. Lets face it…a single focused phone OEM ain’t gonna make it in an ever increasing commoditized world for long.
This isn’t even news anymore. I can’t remember the last time the reported anything other than being in the red.
Their stupid commercials pretty much saying they do not care about what consumers thing certainly don’t help… Maybe they should realize that when the mass speaks that is actually what they should be listening to if they want to sell a significant amount of product.
I don’t remember seeing an HTC ad… anywhere.
The commercial with Gary Oldman? I’ve actually seen that on TV a few times
Marketing is their problem. Gary Oldman is not known in mainstream America. The only reason I knew he was Commisioner Gordon was because I was on this site. Why did they think a pretentious British guy would sell phones? And the phone looks too industrial, no charm at all imo which is why it isn’t selling.
I wouldn’t say that “mainstream America” doesn’t know Gary Oldman. Anyone who ever watched Nolan’s Batman trilogy should be able to recognize him.
Marketing is a big problem for HTC, which is a well-known fact by readers of (at least) Phandroid. HTC is doing better with marketing in the past, but not good enough.
I don’t agree with you with the styling of the M8, but it’s subject to opinion. I see many people walking around with the M7 or the M8 (in the Houston area) as much as I see people walking around with the S4 or S5, so HTC must be doing something right, and I’d like to think the design of the phone played a big part.
HTC Imma keep buying every flagship you release, because I always find them to be the best
I could care less about boomsound speakers at front, just put a good one like motorola did with the moto x! put it in the back or bottom where ever but please get rid off the danm bezel that is not doing anything but making a good looking phone look bad.
I loved my HTC G1 and the Evo was stinking awesome in its day…but HTC started the fail blog rolling when they locked bootloaders, got rid of removable batteries, and shunned SD cards. They started to come back with the One, and again with the One M8, but they never fully figured out what the consumer base really wanted. They wanted all options. Not that they’d necessarily USE said options, but they wanted them there. And they wanted the best phone out there to be on their carrier. HTC should have owned the game the way they started the Android train rolling (G1, Hero, Evo, Nexus One), but they closed down when an original mis-stepper (Samsung Behold II, anyone?) figured out the magic formula.
Ex-fkn-actly. I owned the G1, Mytouch 3G, HD2, Nexus One, One X and One X plus. After that it was it, once their mantra changed I refused to keep buying devices from a company that doesn’t listen to their loyal consumer base. I speak with my wallet and eventhough I hate to see HTC in bad shape, they put themselves in this predicament. BTW, also had the Samsung Behold II and it was just terrible. I swore of Samsung when they ditched support but at least they managed to figure out what it took to be a major OEM.
HTC, the company that rarely listens to users, only when it’s too late.
Most complained about feature in the M7? the camera, what does HTC do? they include the same camera in the M8.
Good job HTC.
Come on HTC, there is absolutely no BUZZ about your products. All I see on Facebook is “my boyfriend bought me an Iphone” or “my husband bought me Galaxy S5” and there is real excitement.But never once did I see “my parents just bought me an HTC One M8”
Probably the worst named phone of all time. HTC has a great product, thats a given, but it won’t sell itself. Unless they figure out how to make it cool, they are dead.
Let’s take the Beats example. Crappy product well marketed selling like hot cakes. When will HTC learn? Probably never and its a shame really.
But, but, everyone wants a preeeemmmium metal device with virtual buttons!!! Plastic and hardware buttons suck!!!
LOL
I guess those in the market for a metal phone do not buy HTC….their bad.
Give the people what they want and stop with these aluminum/double chin/iPhone wannabes and maybe people will take you seriously.
when will the bleeding stop!?!?
“The All New HTC One M8 is designed for people that form their own opinion”…. this is easily the best line in a commercial ever said. They should be the top phone manufacturer.
Would, could, shoulda. That’s fan boy talk. Consumers talk with their wallets and the public has spoken. HTC is exactly who they are; a confused OEM who doesn’t know how to pull out of the red.
The people formed their opinion…
LoL… Gotta agree. Poor HTC
I really don’t want the first Android manufacturer to be the first major drop.
This article nails it right on the head!!! http://bgr.com/2014/06/03/samsung-vs-htc-google/
Let’s take the Beats example. Crappy product well marketed selling like hot cakes. When will HTC learn? Probably never and its a shame really.
Let’s see. HTC-One had Non-removable batteries and no SD card. Need I say more? I might have got that instead of my S4 if it weren’t for that. I won’t be in the market again until late 2015. Hopefully HTC will have learned by then! Just copying apple is NOT the way to go. Samsung made BETTER than apple, not a copy before you say it. Rounded corners “patent” (LOL) or not.
I agree the marketing matters too. My sister in law had a cracked screen on her Rezound so I offered her my old one. She was like “REALLY? Does it have BEATS?” She has NO IDEA what else the phone has, but knows she wants “Beats”. LOL