HTC sees negative growth for first time in 2 years

True to its earnings guidance in Q3, which surprised investors at the time, HTC’s Q4 results (pdf) for the period October to December showed a sharp decline in profit of 25 percent. The result marks HTC's first decline in two years, after riding a wave of success with a series of hit Android-powered smartphones. However, recently it has lost ground to Samsung in the Android space, which by contrast has been riding high on all-time record smartphone sales.

HTC’s profit fell from $455 million to $364 million for the same period last year and analysts predict that its current decline is set to continue into Q1 this year. Its next generation of 4G LTE smartphones will not ship until Q2, meaning HTC may not be able to turn things around at least until then. These phones are not expected to show at CES, but at the Mobile World Congress.

At the time HTC predicted its bleak outlook for Q4, Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi suggested that part of the reason HTC could be seeing a downturn in shipments is that many of its models compete with each other.

"They have many products really targeting a similar audience and this is never a good thing," Milanesi said.

"Although I believe HTC is still the vendor that has made more progress in building a company experience around Android, I think they need to look at their portfolio very carefully and rationalize it." [via Reuters]

By Electronista Staff