HTC Struggling to Meet Competition from Samsung and Apple

When HTC released the results of its most recent financial quarter, the CEO was up-front about the reason for the 70% year-over-year decline in profits: his company isn't competing well against Samsung and Apple.

Its revenue during the January-March period was 68 billion New Taiwan dollars, leading to a profit of NT$4.5 billion ($152 million). As mentioned earlier, that's a 35% decrease in revenue over the same quarter of 2011.

HTC did quite well during the third quarter of last year, and one market-research company even put it on top of U.S. smartphone sales. The situation changed in Q4 though. According to CEO Peter Chou, "A major challenge we faced last year was the big drop in sales in the U.S. because of competition from the iPhone 4S." HTC showed a decline in profitability that quarter.

A Turn-Around?

Still, it is pinning its hopes on its new series of smartphones: the HTC One X, One S, and One V. These were announced last quarter and are starting to reach store shelves now -- AT&T will soon release the One X, and T-Mobile will introduce the One S tomorrow.

Company executives are feeling bullish about sales, thanks to these new models. They have predicted revenue for the current quarter to be NT$105 billion ($3.6 billion), which would be a 55% increase.