HTC One delay not helping the company turn a profit, delay causes profits to Plummet

HTC really needs a big win fast. Their latest flagship device, the HTC One, was supposed to be their saving grace that would turn company around and bring them back into the big leagues of the manufacturer market again. After news of a delay in launch though, the device lost a little bit of its steam. Plenty of people out there are still clamoring for it though. Heck, we saw that at least one carrier sold out of pre-orders in an hour something crazy. The demand for the device is definitely still present, but now HTC has to hope that the delay into Q2 will work to their advantage after the lowest profit return quarter in years.

The most recent report puts HTC’s first quarter net income at a shocking $2.8 million last quarter. Which, according to Taoyuan, is a 98% drop and is the sixth straight quarterly decline for HTC.

Early rumors put the HTC One as headed to market in early March. That would have given it plenty of time to sell like hot cakes before Samsung put out the Galaxy S 4. With a component shortage hitting HTC in production of the device, they were forced to move it back. Doing so puts them in the same launch time frame as the Samsung and the S 4. This does give consumers a bit of an advantage in our mind though. Having both devices in stores to put side by side and check out makes purchasing decisions a little easier. Sadly though, we think the missed March launch will end up costing HTC more customers jumping to the S 4.

Luckily for HTC, they didn’t put all their bread in one basket. They also have the HTC First device that was recently announced. You know the one, the Facebook Phone that was denied more times than I was for Old Navy card. The Facebook branding and the new Facebook Home does have a lot of pull still. Heck, I saw a guy at the store yesterday with a Facebook hat on. No he wasn’t an employee, I asked. Hopefully between the HTC First and the HTC One they can rebound from consecutive loss. HTC Makes great hardware, the focus on flooding the market with various device versions and never sticking with one specific flagship really put them in the hurt locker. We wish you the best HTC. Now all you need to do is bring the next Nexus device to market. Wouldn’t that be great?

Source: Bloomberg