High Tech Computer Corp (HTC, 宏達電), the world's biggest manufacturer of handsets running a Microsoft Corp operating system, yesterday said that it expected revenues and net margin for the current quarter to rise only slightly from the same period last year on the back of slow seasonal demand.
HTC expects business momentum to pick up on a quarterly basis, beginning in the second quarter, boosted by new products.
"The first quarter is a slack season in the communications industry," HTC financial executive Cheng Hui-ming (
Revenues should be slightly better than in the first quarter of last year, Cheng said.
HTC posted NT$24 billion (US$732.5 million) in revenues for the first three months of last year.
Net margin before tax for the current quarter would be the same as a year earlier, which was 23 percent, Cheng said.
Cheng said that the company would launch more new products beginning late this quarter.
In the long term, HTC will adjust its price strategy on intensifying competition to safeguard its market position, Cheng said.
To explore more business opportunities, HTC plans to set up offices in India and emerging Middle-Eastern markets this year, he added.
HTC broke into the Japanese market in the second half of last year, the company said.
About 70 percent of the company's revenues last year came from the US and European markets, it said.
Commenting on Apple Inc's new iPhone, HTC president Peter Chou (周永明) said that the company's most popular products did not have much in common with the iPhone, which focuses on music capabilities.
The Taiwanese handset manufacturer supplies phones to Vodafone Group, Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile, Orange SA, NTT DoCoMo Ltd and others.
CLSA Ltd analyst Vincent Chen (陳豊丰) downgraded the stock to "under-perform" from "buy" on concerns over future growth momentum amid growing competition.
He also slashed the target price by nearly 30 percent to NT$628 from an earlier estimate of NT$894.
HTC shares were unchanged at NT$530 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, outperforming the benchmark TAIEX index's 0.7 percent loss.
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