Things haven’t been looking good for HTC. The company had high hopes with the launch of the HTC One, which was later followed-up by the One max and One mini. But HTC still posted a quarterly loss for Q3 2013. That wasn’t all that surprising given the previous years history, however it doesn’t look like things are going to be improving during the fourth quarter.
In fact, HTC has recently warned that Q4 revenue could fall as much as 15 percent as compared to the previous quarter. This is not only another drop from Q3, but it also takes HTC below analyst estimates. According to a Reuters report, HTC has estimated that fourth-quarter revenue would fall somewhere between T$40 billion to T$45 billion.
As for those analyst estimates, those had HTC at T$46 billion. In comparison, HTC reported revenue of T$47.1 billion in the previous quarter and T$60 billion last year. HTC also reported that revenue dropped 13 percent in October from the same month a year earlier. To this point, it looks like HTC is going to be switching strategy.
HTC company financial chief Chialin Chang touched on how HTC would be looking towards increasing volume and decreasing prices moving forward. This in hope, to get them back to a profit.
“We’re looking at broader products in this quarter…we aim for higher volume into 2014 that will give better profitability,” company financial chief Chialin Chang
Otherwise, in a bit of a follow-up to the earlier reports about HTC closing some factories, there was talk of outsourcing. Reuters is reporting that HTC has plans to “outsource some manufacturing to other firms and split its design and manufacturing arms.” That part of course, goes to HTC making an attempt at cutting costs and keeping operating expenses low. Or in other words, trying to inch out a profit.
