HTC Predicts Massive Turnaround

From DailyTech: First, there was a bold prediction from struggling Taiwanese phonemaker HTC Corp. (TPE:2498). The company is currently reeling from an abysmal quarter which saw its profit cut in half from a year before, sending a meteoric rise to the top of the smartphone market to a grinding halt. HTC predicts that it will pull in second quarter revenue of $105B TWD ($3.56B USD), a bullish estimate that's 3.5 percent above the analyst target of $101.46B TWD.

The company's ambitions will pin partially on its new flagship smartphone, the monstrous Android Ice Cream Sandwich, 1.5 GHz quad-core (Tegra 3), 4.7-inch 720p HTC One X, which will go head to head with Android leader Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd.'s (KS:005930) Galaxy S II (and next-gen. Galaxy S 3).

The One X will launch first on AT&T Inc. (T) in the U.S. on May 8, and is rumored to be headed for Sprint Nextel Corp.'s (S) brand new LTE network, re-branded as the HTC EVO 4G LTE. Pre-orders on Sprint are reportedly kicking off on May 7 -- a day before the launch at AT&T.

HTC has found itself in a financial slump similar to Nokia Oyj. (HEX:NOK1V), but the reasons behind that slump are a bit different. Where as Nokia's recent woes have come from a painful operating system platform switch, HTC recent issues have largely come from being outshone on its platforms of choice.

Samsung has dominated Android sales, with its Galaxy phones heavily outselling HTC models globally. While it's hard to pin HTC's sales problems on a single issue, the company's bloated Sense UI firmware and lagging design aesthetics are among the culprits.

Still, handsets like the impressive HTC Titan II LTE Windows Phone (Mango) and the HTC One X, which comes with a chic white frame, show HTC has the potential to maker star superphones. Whether it can live up to its bold aspirations, though, remains to be seen.

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