Smmartphone maker HTC is forecasting a really bad quarter.
The Taiwanese company has slashed their revenue projections for the Q2 drastically, claiming poor sales of their "high-end Android devices," namely the HTC One M9 and increased competition from the Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6.
HTC had a previous forecast for between $1.48 billion and $1.56 billion USD in revenue for the quarter, ... [ read the full article ]
Please read the original article before posting your comments.
Originally posted by Jemborg: Don't these guys make good phones?
I've had the HTC One for the last 22 months or so, and have been very happy with it. My wife has one too, and considers it to be much better than the iPhone 4S she had before that. However, I will not be replacing it with the M9 when my contract runs out in August because there just doesn't seem to be much in the way of improvements or benefits in the new model. I'm sure somebody could point out a few improvements, but nothing compelling from my point of view.
With more and more stuff being done on the phone these days, (and my eyes getting older faster than ever) I think I will go for a bigger screen. Will probably get the Samsung G6. I would consider the Google Nexus 6 but my carrier (Optus Australia) doesn't offer it.
Originally posted by Jemborg: Don't these guys make good phones?
Generally yes, at least in my opinion. It's their marketing that seems to be the issue.
For example, until - relatively - recently, they had the very bad habit of offering their flagship models on only one, or just a few carriers, instantly limiting their market. You don't find Samsung or Apple EVER doing that, and rightly so! The money you get from the "sweetheart" deal with the carrier(s) may help in the short run, but it's just silly in the long run. This is possibly the single biggest reason behind their decline, I'd say.
Another marketing flub is simply LACK of visible marketing; they just never got (or get) the word out enough. There's simply no reason that the One series hasn't sold better beyond marketing; they're excellent phones. Samsung's name recognition requires a much more serious effort than I've seen from HTC.
It's sad, really. I really liked the original Evo, back in the day - in fact, my wife got it after me and JUST replaced it a week ago - and the Evo 3D (while the 3D itself was...painful) was also excellent at the time. But right there, you have another example of their "exclusive" deals; I would've preferred the "Thunderbolt" (basically an Evo 3D w/o the 3D gimmick) over the 3D any day, but it wasn't available on my network (Sprint), and my buddy who had a Thunderbolt wanted the 3D, with the exact same problem (T-Mobile) - lol...