HTC Cards $101M Loss In Q4 2015, Its Third Successive Quarter In The Red

HTC’s (financial) struggle is real. The Taiwanese tech firm endured another rough quarter of business after it posted a NT$3.4 billion ($101 million) net loss for Q4 2015. Total revenue came in at NT$25.7 billion ($766 million), which is up nearly 20 percent quarter-on-quarter but down a massive 46 percent year-on-year.

The phone maker booked a slender NT$0.47 billion (then $14.7 million) profit one year ago in Q4 2014, but this time around it is a third successive quarterly loss following on from a NT$4.5 billion ($139 million) loss in Q3 2015, when it stopped forecasting its own sales, and a NT$8.0 billion (US$252 million) loss in Q2.

In a brief press announcement, HTC made some unspecific positive noises about its newer products. Its Desire line saw “good momentum” and the HTC One A9 was “well received” in Asia, the U.S. and Europe, we’re told. On a call with analysts, Chialin Chang, CFO and President of Global Sales, was more frank, admitting that sales of HTC’s flagship HTC One M9 “fell short of expectation” in 2015.

“You will find [that] the product portfolio is streamlined and matched with the right cost of doing business,” Chang said when asked what HTC plans to do differently this year.

In a bid to find that “right cost”, HTC implemented a series of restructuring initiatives in the latter part of 2015, which included laying off 15 percent of staff, and some costs related to that are still being felt. Chang said that one further quarter of expenditure from restructuring will happen, so improved financial results aren’t expected until HTC’s Q2 2016, the company CFO added.

HTC is putting a lot of emphasis on virtual reality (including its upcoming Vive product) and the Internet of things. Chang voiced his optimistic that efforts in VR and wearables — where it is working with Under Armor, and just launched its first product — “will be able to contribute to the bottom line in a meaningful way.” Aside from being ambiguous, it’s tough to know how VR will play out in the consumer space — and in terms of sales — but it is so nascent and unlike other productrs on the market. What is clear, however, is that 2015 was a disaster for HTC, and the company can’t afford a repeat this year.

Comments

Visa confirms Coinbase wasn’t at fault for overcharging users

Yesterday, we wrote that Coinbase customers were being charged multiple times for past transactions. While some speculated that the erroneous withdraws were down to a Coinbase engineering issue, Coinbase issued a statement saying it wasn’t liable for the duplicate charges. The blame, instead, rested with Visa for the way it handled a migration of merchant categories for cryptocurrencies, Coinbase said. While you can read my post yesterday for an in-depth description of what happened, the basic gist is that Visa refunded and recharged (under a different merchant category) a month of old transactions. Many users saw the recharge come through before the refund processed, making it look like they were double charged. Honestly, the issue was likely exacerbated by existing payment rails — it’s normal for refunds to take multiple days to show up on credit and debit statements. But here’s where it gets weird — this morning Visa issued a statement to some publications shifting the blam...

Montana-based mapping startup onXmaps raises a round of funding fit for Big Sky Country

A mapping startup based in Missoula, Mont., which allows users to download sophisticated offline topographic maps outlining public and private lands and a number of other features geared towards hunting, fishing and camping, has pulled in its first major outside funding. onXmaps has closed a $20.3 million Series A round led by Summit Partners. Bessemer Venture Partners, Millennium Technology Value Partners, Next Frontier Capital and NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke also participated in the round. The company is calling the fundraise one of the biggest ever among startups based in Montana. onX Hunt app This is impressively the first bout of outside funding that the 70-person startup has ever taken since being founded in 2009. The company’s founder and CEO Eric Siegfried, an avid outdoorsman himself, had created a more basic program to integrate these maps with his own Garmin GPS. After finding his friends were interested in having a product like this too, he put down $27k of his...

Here’s how to keep track of Elon Musk’s Roadster and Starman in space

Elon Musk’s Starman, the mannequin driver of the Tesla Roadster SpaceX launched aboard its Falcon Heavy rocket, is taking a trip around our solar system, in a large elliptical orbit that will bring him relatively close to Mars, the Sun and other heavenly bodies. But how to track the trip, now that the Roadster’s onboard batteries are out of juice and no longer transmitting live footage? Thanks to the work of Ben Pearson, a SpaceX fan and electrical engineer working in the aerospace industry, who created ‘Where is Roadster,’ a website that makes use of JPL Horizons data to track the progress of the Roadster and Starman through space, and to predict its path and let you know when it’ll come close to meeting up with various planets and the Sun. The website tells you the Roadster’s current position, too, as well as its speed and whether it’s moving towards or away from Earth and Mars at any given moment. It’s not officially affiliated with SpaceX or Tesla, but it is something Elon...

Engineering against all odds, or how NYC’s subway will get wireless in the tunnels

Never ask a wireless engineer working on the NYC subway system “What can go wrong?” Flooding, ice, brake dust, and power outages relentlessly attack the network components. Rats — many, many rats — can eat power and fiber optic cables and bring down the whole system. Humans are no different, as their curiosity or malice strikes a blow against wireless hardware (literally and metaphorically). Serverless software deployment to the cloud, this is not. New York City officially got wireless service in every underground subway station a little more than a year ago, and I was curious what work went into the buildout of this system as well as how it will expand in the future. That curiosity is part of a series of articles I’ve written on an observed pattern known as cost disease, the massively inflating costs of basic human services like health care, housing, infrastructure, and education. The United States spends trillions of dollars on each of these fields, massively outspending sim...

Best Web Design Company in Pondicherry

#Technology has two faces. We all feel it, but sometimes can’t find words to describe it. #Ebooks are the best example to show the 0-1 nature of emotions the #technology evokes. #itwhere provide a #Best #solutions to #Growyourbusiness feel free to drop a #Mail info@itwheretech.co.in www.itwheretech.co.in

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog