“HTC has just announced its unaudited results for the second quarter 2013, and they’re not pretty. Despite launching a much-lauded flagship smartphone, the HTC One, the company made just NT$1.25 billion (roughly $41 million) after tax from NT$70.7 billion ($2.35 billion) revenue. In the same quarter last year, the company took in revenue of NT$91.04 billion ($3 billion) and made NT$7.40 billion ($246 million) profit.” Make the best Android phone – and perhaps, the best phone period – and still not be out of hot water. And people still claim the smartphone market is not a one-to-one replica of the desktop market. Anywho, another victim of iceberg Apple and hurricane Samsung.
The HTC One X is just the last victim of failed promised to update.
First HTC promises updates, then six months later it says that due to technical issues it is not possible to do so. This already happend at least three times since the HTC Desire days.
Then they removed the SD card support.
For some people, this just puts them away as potencial customers, although many don’t care about it.
Well, there is also that HTC could only put out so many crappy products before their brand became terminally tarnished. At least in our household, we have had 2 HTC devices both of which ended up sucking balls.
At least you can provides them with a second life and put them elsewhere than your pocket.
I knew that vibrating phones already had a special usage for women, never expected HTC would be so… manly.
Kochise
Honestly, I think HTC are putting out the nicest handsets of all the Android manufacturers. Samsung devices feel cheaper (I really don’t like the lighter, plastic feel of the S3 – though I will concede I’ve not held the S4) and TouchWiz just annoys me immensely.
I still have a year left on my contract, but I’m aching to buy the latest HTC since the announcement that it’ll run stock Android (and I’m sure cyanogenmod will follow shortly off the back of that)
Perhaps we could unpack that claim a bit. It seems to me that the mobile device market is very, very different to the desktop PC market in important ways.
For example:
In the mobile device market all the profits are being made by two hardware manufacturers and not by a software company charging a licensing fee for the operating system.
In the mobile device markets up until now it has been software which is being commodified and not hardware.
In the mobile device markets the bulk of the value added activity, profitability and monetisation is happening on the platform with the smaller market share.
In the mobile device markets the company who owns the majority operating system does not actually control it’s platform in any meaningful sense, it appears that the entities with the biggest clout on the majority platform are not the distributors of the OS or even the OEMs but the carriers, a category of player absence from the desktop markets.
In the mobile device markets the dynamic driving device and OS adoption and use is not dominated by the corporate IT sector but by the personal consumer sector.
Just a few thoughts on why I think the mobile device market is not like the old desktop market, I would love to hear why you think they are a “one to one replica”. Or even just similar. This seems a very interesting topic because I think one of the things that bedevils discourse about the mobile device markets is inappropriate comparisons or claims of similarity with the old PC market.
PC/Mobile
Windows/Android – Majority market share, many OEMs
Mac OS X/iOS – Respectable second spot, all hardware made by Apple
Linux/Windows Phone 8 – Is that a hair on my screen or actually a slice in the pie chart?
Yeh, because the Mobile market is not at all similar to the PC market…
If you want to go as far as monetisation, look at iTunes, Windows Store and the Mac App Store. They’re all OSes running on Personal Computers and regardless of business model, they all (apart from many GNU/Linux distros) make money for their parent company.
Were you trying to show that it is the same or completely different?
Well for starters the outcome is completely different. In the desktop market the majority market share supported the majority of monitisation, profits and platform actvity. In the mobile device markets the opposite is true and iOS pretty well trounces Android when it comes to platform activity, monetisation and profitability (using any measure of platform of activity).
So the first conclusion one draw is that, unlike in the desktop PC era, market share is a very poor proxy in the device markets for measuring things like the degree or platform activity, health or monetisation. That in itself is pretty huge.
So basically is we use any measure of a niche gauge that nobody normally uses to gauge a platforms success, then iOS trounces Android?
I love how fanboys like yourself are constantly fiddling with statistics and shifting goal posts to re-enforce your own deluded view of the universe.
Use any normal measure (handsets sold, handsets in circulation, OS penetration, or even a 1:1 measure of the latest best sellers (iPhone 5 vs Galaxy S4) and Android consistently comes out on top.
So cut the crap about how iOS is trouncing Android with any measure chosen – when you’re specifically choosing dumb measurements to suit your own narrow-mindedness.
(and for what it’s worth – I really don’t like the Galaxy S4 any more than you do. But there’s a difference between disliking something yet respecting others choice to buy; and being too deluded to realise that your preferred platform is losing out to the Galaxy S4. Most sane people would say “so long as I still have the choice to buy my preferred platform, then let others do the same themselves”. But no, instead you prefer to continually misrepresent the facts to support your own deluded world view).
Edited 2013-07-08 11:31 UTC
Wait, why is it deluded? What is the point of spending billions to stand up an ecosystem? How do we measure its health? Do sale statistics represent this best? They are good questions to ask.
I think the OP raises good points and provides an insightful analysis, in my option pretty much the opposite of delusional.
We’re still in the early years of mobile OS wars, give it some time… (plus the factor of geography – the “small but active” OS is somewhat more popular than average in the few lavish markets)
[citation needed] The One had problems with the Ultrapixel camera, mainly that it took crap photos. HTC claims they have an update that fixes the issue, but the damage is done. Oh, and the upgrade issues mentioned above. Any Android OEM not doing well with upgrades is dead in the water IMO. The people who buy phones like the One have wised up and demand upgrades so that they won’t have to beg for them later. This is why Samsung will give 4.2 to the SGS III, in order to cement the status of the Galaxy S line as the king of upgrades (among non Nexus/Google Edition phones).
Sad truth is that Samsung still sells more Galaxy S4’s than HTC sells Ones.
And the fact they had production problems. And the fact they barely have a presense in the low end and midrange sector
Edited 2013-07-05 18:28 UTC
Now their low/midrange phones really suck in comparison. Less RAM, slower CPU, low-res screen, terrible camera, and HTC’s typical appearance.
Their sale strategy is clearly faulty. Nobody likes cheap android phone because it’d be too slow to be usable and you can always get very good phones such as S3 mini or Xperia V for FREE by 2 years contract. What they need to offer are the flagship phones, and the best phones which people can afford without actually paying any dollar for the phone itself.
Good! GOOD! *APPLAUSE* Finally some justice.
HTC should start to follow their own propaganda-slogans about customer-care and “make the best android phones”.
And the best: “promise to give a s**t for the customer after he bought the smartphone!”
(Yes, I’m an HTC Desire HD user for 2 years… and have been blessed by the treason by HTC, for not updating the Android version. Some apps on Play refuse to install. I’m currently running 2.3.5 and will never forgive them.).
http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/28/3198155/htc-desire-hd-no-android-…
HTC – Hate The Customers
HTC has some good products but they keep shooting themselves in the foot with monumentally bad decisions. They’d be number one in no time at all if they did three things with their HTC One:
1) Allow the latest android releases. Not say they will and then when customers buy their product for a few months officially leave them stranded!
2) SD Card.
3) Replaceable batteries.
They can do step 1 now. The others need a new version of the phone. Should not take them long though…
At least, at very least, they unlocked their bootloader, thus allowing ROM cookers to set the dishes. But it’s still definitively NOT for the average Joe.
Kochise, HTC Evo 3D under CyanogenMod 10.1 JB 4.2.2 with no more 3D functionalities (thanks to undocumented binary blobs)
Yeah, and make it plastic so the phone is not so goddamn heavy, vs the S4. (Yes, I’m serious.) Also, add the third missing navigation button on the bottom and make turning off the Blinkfeed bloatware an option. Do these things, plus everything you said, and I *MIGHT* consider buying one.
As it is, I’m glad this thing failed. They released an aluminum fashion accessory that barely had any advantages over the Nexus 4, and for twice the price, and tried to pawn it off as a premium device. I guess most people who fall for the ‘it’s aluminum so it must be better’ kind of bullshit still buy iPhones
Edited 2013-07-05 21:42 UTC
Agreed. As long as other companies will give the users what they want (sd card, removable batteries, updates), HTC will fail if they don’t address these issues.
It’s not only us technophiles, my father likes having a replaceable battery, my wife, my father, my mom like having a sdcard for cheap storage of music and photos.
They don’t care however about the os updates so much as long as their apps work.
“And people still claim the smartphone market is not a one-to-one replica of the desktop market.”
Yup, and what is your basis for claiming that it is a one-to-one analog? What particularly about this story makes it so?
is run by idiots.
This whole stupid how idea about how thin you can make a cell phone crap I could care less about.
The technology is fine for a nice thin phone if you want one PLUS a removable battery.
For some of us that write our own phone software it is nice to have a bigger battery because phones now days do way the heck more than talking and texting.
But, no way does it sit right by me that I have to be without my phone simply because the battery fails when CLEARLY this is so you are forced to buy more than one of the phones or a backup phone.
The battery is only $22 dollars for my Galaxy S3. I am not buying another 700 dollar phone and be without just for a $22 dollar part.
Until HTC builds a phone with a removable battery they can pound sand and be buried by it.
I won’t by a phone from HTC ever.
-Hack
PS: Quiz: What was the most popular phone ever by HTC and did it have a removable battery? BINGO the EVO and ever since the company has gone down HILL.
In other news, the 4.2 update for my One S was just shelved. The HTC One is beautiful now, sure, but see how they treat it in one year’s time. “Please give us one more chance”, they plead. Not likely, no matter how beautiful their next phone is. They haven’t learned their lesson at all.
Uh..because it isn’t? I really don’t see how the smartphone market is a one-to-one replica of the PC desktop market. Sure, there are similarities and you can draw analogies but a one-to-one replica? No, not really.
They do not focus on quality like Samsung or Jobs-era apple did. They have had a few mistakes along the path, and did not embrace Android like Samsung. The One may be a good phone, but you need to either be Apple, Samsung, or LG to succeed these days in the smartphone market. You need the app infrastructure that Apple owns, or you need to control the international supply chain with a well structured company like Samsung. LG just is a gigantic conglomerate that can leverage through sheer numbers. HTC has none of these things and is at the mercy of companies that can control them. Elop managed to turn Nokia into another HTC.
Let’s see who fails first.
Everyone I know for a while bought HTC’s. They then experienced HTC’s upgrade policy and their build quality (not build materials).
Whilst not everyone had bad experiences, its not that surprising that they are where they are.
Also Sense UI yuck! and those buttons gahh!
The most common phones I see now amongst them are Samsungs, Apples and Sonys.
Osnews is the only site I came across that keep insisting that HTC one is the best phone around..
It makes me want to vomit..
The build quality of HTC is bad.. It usually is nice for a while, but it doesn’t stand up to careless usage.
I am perfectly ok that the phone needs to be send in for servicing.. My experience with HTC is that they will try their best to void your warranty so that they do not have to service ya phone..
with half hearted attempt to fix the phone plus lacked of full testing to ensure the phone is ok.. I took back a phone with the same problem. I gave up the 6 months old diamond touch together with the company call htc.
(get to know from forum many months later that the problem I experienced is a manufacturing fault)
Apprently best phone is not only best hardware or best design.. It is the overall experience provided by the manufacturer.
Get it straight Osnews.