HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s fifth-largest smartphone maker, overtook Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co in the third quarter to become the leading smartphone vendor in the US market, according to research firm Canalys.
The Taiwanese company shipped 5.7 million smartphones under its own brand, giving it a 22.9 percent share of the market, Canalys said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
Samsung was second with shipments of 4.9 million, followed by Apple with 4.6 million units, it said.
However, HTC’s stock slid 4.23 percent to NT$657 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange after the company’s fourth-quarter guidance turned out lower than analysts’ expectations.
HTC told an investors’ conference call on Monday that fourth-quarter revenues would drop 3 to 9 percent sequentially because of strong competition from Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy.
JPMorgan said the guidance was a “big miss” compared with the firm’s performance over the past five years (up 26 percent quarter-on-quarter on average) and the Bloomberg consensus (up 10 percent quarter-on-quarter).
Despite a big wave of product launches in the fourth quarter, such as the Sensation XE, HTC is vulnerable to the big iPhone launch and expects to ship only about 12 million to 13 million smartphones in the period, JPMorgan said in a note on Monday.
“Apple’s upward revision for iPhone 4S by over 5 million units for 4Q [the fourth quarter] means someone has to lose in such a weak economy,” JPMorgan said.
“This time, Apple is taking a fast-time-to-market launch instead of the phased launch of the past. Thus the impact on its rivals will be sharpest in the first quarter, and should diminish thereafter,” it said.
Because of the fourth-quarter jolt from the new iPhone’s launch, HTC’s full-year shipments will only reach 47 million to 48 million units, missing its previous forecast of 50 million units, JPMorgan said.
Although HTC said there would be a few LTE (long-term evolution) models launched later in the fourth quarter, the weak economy could limit sales of LTE phones considering their high average selling price, it said.
JPMorgan lowered its target price for HTC to NT$690 from NT$800.
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