Despite positive profits and some monster growth, especially in the US market, HTC is in hot water with their shareholders. The Taiwanese smartphone maker had to reduce its fourth quarter outlook from flat growth to negative last week, after a prospective patent purchase fell through when the company lost its suit against Apple. A beat-down from German courts over yet another patent case didn’t help. CFO Winston Yung placated investors in an interview with Reuters, hyping up a focus on high-end products in the upcoming year.
Though Yung was careful not to give specifics on anything (much to the dismay of eager Android bloggers like your truly), he was bullish on HTC’s upcoming portfolio. “We will focus on the product next year, better and more competitive. Other than new LTE phones for the U.S. market, we also have phones for the global market. We will launch some worldwide flagship products. We’re confident in them.” HTC is probably looking to regain the lead at the top of the high-end hardware pile, as Samsung and Motorola continue to equal and in some cases exceed their handsets.
We already know what at least two of those flagship products are likely to be: the HTC Edge, a Tegra 3 quad-core monster with a 4.7-inch 720p screen, and the HTC Ville, an 8.4-mm slate with a Super AMOLED display. Both phones are rumored for a release early next year with Ice Cream Sandwich, and will probably be shown off at either CES in January or Mobile World Congress in February. What say you, readers – is HTC at the beginning of a long downward slide a la Nokia, or just suffering a temporary setback?
[via SlashGear]
This is completely temporary. No phone has better build than HTC and while i don’t speak for anyone else, that means a lot. Their hardware in general is top-tier as well. While design is on a personal basis, the components are not and they are just as good or better than most any other smartphone producer. As long as they keep up making products like the rezound they’ll do well. I’ve loved them since the Incredible and don’t see that changing anytime soon.
dear HTC
beautiful devices, but…*focus more on battery consumption. learn to build better batteries competitive enough. meaning, we need a first LTE super phone to actually lasts us 2 days*invest your money on better than average processors. learn from samsung’s exynos godly processor.*we don’t need bigger than 4.5 inch displays. we need better resolution and beautiful, battery consumption friendly, HD vibrant colorful displays. drop the LCD, and adopt your own super amoled plus technology. we need darker blacks, vibrant rich colors, and HD performance.*go easy on your UI SENSE. keep making it accessible and productive, but at the same time non obstructive to GOOGLE’s OS updates. we want the updates right away, not months after their release.*keep improving on your already amazing camera. do not sit on your laurels and let the competition steal one of the last things that makes HTC amazing.*lastly, but not least, put your phones on a better diet. we are happy with large displays, 4.7 being the biggest, but we hate bulky phones. no one wants to carry a thicker than 8mm thick phone. it is embarrassing. LEARN FROM SAMSUNG AND MOTOROLA AND APPLE to make slender devices.
about the lcd. they should not drop it, when ever i talk to a tech person they say go for plasma over led/amoled the colours are accurate to life and not fluorescent green coulours when you look at grass etc. s-lcd is better on battery life and has more accurate colours and does not need pentile for higher resoluotions. and about the thickness thin can be very bad! people like the 11 mm thickness on the htc sensation as it fells sturdy and fits well in the hand were with the motorola droid razr people find it awkward to hold.
and when i say they say go for plasma they mean get the more accurate colour producing screen