HTC Corp (宏達電) said an updated version of the One smartphone, its first wearable device and a renewed focus on marketing will help turn around the company this year after two straight annual declines in revenue.
“We feel positive and optimistic about 2014 when compared to 2013,” Chang Chialin (張嘉臨), chief financial officer and head of global sales for the Taoyuan-based company, said in an interview on Wednesday at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York.
He declined to provide a forecast ahead of an investor conference call scheduled for Monday.
Once the leading smartphone maker in the US, HTC’s sales dropped 30 percent last year as product delays and a shrinking marketing budget caused it to lose market share to LG Electronics Inc and Lenovo Group Ltd.
A wearable device will be available by this year’s Christmas shopping season after years of development and technical challenges, HTC chairman Cher Wang (王雪紅) said.
“Many years ago, we started looking at smartwatches and wearables, but we believe that we really have to solve the battery problems and the LCD light problems,” she said in the interview. “These are customer-centric problems.”
HTC shares fell 53 percent last year, their third annual decline, while revenue dropped to NT$203.4 billion (US$6.7 billion) and it reported its first annual net loss. Its sales and marketing budget dropped 20 percent in 2012, and was 9 percent lower for the year through Sept. 30, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The firm’s stock climbed as much as 1.6 percent in Taipei yesterday after Bloomberg News reported the executives’ comments, and closed 0.4 percent higher at NT$129.50, its first increase in six trading sessions.
Wang, who cofounded the company with chief executive officer Peter Chou (周永明) and former chief executive H.T. Cho (卓火土) in 1997, said HTC plans to renew its marketing efforts after last year’s well-received One smartphone failed to boost revenue.
“To tell the truth, we never think marketing is that important — this is really not very good,” Wang said.
The executives declined to say whether HTC’s marketing budget would rise this year after the company last year signed actor Robert Downey Jr for US$12 million to represent it.
“It’s really not only the budget increase, it’s the way how you spend the money. Is it smart?” Wang said. “There’s a lot of ways to reach the audience right now.”
An increase in revenue this year would be HTC’s first since a 67 percent climb in 2011. The company is expected to post a 5 percent drop in sales to NT$193 billion according to the average of 29 analysts estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Net loss will narrow to NT$795 million from NT$1.3 billion last year, the estimates showed.
“It’s a good thing that they’re recognizing the importance of marketing,” Dennis Chan (詹宗勳), who has a sell rating on the stock at Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控) in Taipei, said by telephone.
“I need to be hearing some good pre-order volume for their flagship handset, which I am not hearing yet” before upgrading the stock, he said.
The company will release its next HTC One model next month, featuring a twin-sensor rear camera and a larger screen, Bloomberg News reported last month, citing a person with direct knowledge of the plans.
A wider array of products this year will help HTC find consumers in more segments of the market after it relied on its One and Desire series for most of its revenue last year.
“2013 wasn’t a very good year for HTC,” Chang said. “We have to admit we took our eyes somewhat off the ball in making sure we have a robust portfolio in the mid and affordable end, which we’re fixing now.”
Chang, who became chief financial officer in 2012, took up his concurrent job as head of global sales in December last year, giving the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc managing director an increased say in management of the company.
Wang declined to comment when asked whether Chang is being prepared for a greater role at HTC, instead she reiterated her support for Chou in his current roles as chief executive and president.
Wang, the largest shareholder, is not considering taking HTC private and has not been in talks with possible acquirers, instead expecting it to remain a standalone company, she said.
“I haven’t been approached,” Wang said. “I think they didn’t approach me because I think they know me and they know I am not going to sell.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts