Troubled Taiwanese smartphone marker HTC reported that its second quarter net profit declined 83 percent to $41.6 million, down from $245.4 million a year earlier and missing analysts' estimates that had profit at $66.3 million for the quarter. The company had hoped that its newly launched HTC One smartphone would help it rebound, but that didn't happen.
HTC's revenue also declined 22 percent to $2.345 billion, from $3.02 billion a year earlier.
HTC, once the leading Android smartphone maker in the United States, has been struggling for some time to compete against Samsung Electronics and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) in the high end of the smartphone market and Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE on the low end. As a result, HTC's global smartphone market share fell to 2.5 percent in the first quarter of this year, from 9.3 percent in first quarter of 2011, according to Gartner.
HTC's sales in May came in at close to $970 million, its highest monthly revenue in 11 months. At that time, HTC hoped that its second-quarter revenue would be higher than the weak first quarter thanks to the positive reviews for the HTC One. However, according to analysts, HTC One sales peaked in May. The gadget has face serious competition from Samsung's new Galaxy S4.
Last month HTC CEO Peter Chou told the Wall Street Journal that he would not be stepping down from the smartphone maker anytime soon, despite the company's declining market share and profits and worries about the company's future.
For more:
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)
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