Smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday posted an operating profit of NT$180 million (US$5.63 million) and net profit of NT$470 billion, marking a third straight profitable quarter last quarter.
The NT$470 billion in net profit marked a rise of 51.6 percent year-on-year, but was lower than the NT$640 million made in the previous quarter. Earnings per share (EPS) were NT$0.57 for last quarter, which beat the firm’s previous forecast of between NT$0.07 and NT$0.46.
Overall, HTC reported NT$1.81 in EPS for the whole of last year.
The firm reported losses of NT$1.6 per share in the previous year.
Still, analysts have warned that HTC has a long way to go before regaining lost ground to rivals Samsung Electronics Co and Apple Inc, as well as Chinese peers, such as Xiaomi Corp (小米), Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) and Huawei Technologies Co (華為).
In October last year, HTC said it was searching for new ways to appeal to customers and find fresh revenue streams with the launch of new products.
During the quarter spanning from October to December, the firm launched several new products, including the Desire Eye smartphone, the social video-editing application Zoe and its first camera RE, as well as the Nexus 9 tablet, through close collaboration with Google Inc.
That brought the company’s quarterly revenues to NT$47.86 billion (US$1.49 billion) last quarter, up 14.33 percent from the previous quarter’s NT$41.86 billion and 11.58 percent from NT$42.89 a year earlier. The quarterly figure also beat its estimate of between NT$43 billion and NT$47 billion.
For the whole of last year, the company’s consolidated revenues totaled NT$187.91 billion, declining 7.62 percent from the previous year’s NT$203.4 billion.
Separately, HTC launched its new mid-priced smartphone, the Desire 826, at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, which brings its UltraPixel technology to the front camera, allowing users to take selfies in any kind of light.
The product is also equipped with Dolby Audio surround sound, featuring the first dual front-facing stereo speakers on a smartphone, the company said.
HTC said the Desire 826 will be available with mobile operators and major retailers in Asia-Pacific at the end of this month and in other regions in the subsequent months.
HTC North Asia president Jack Tong (董俊良) earlier said that the company expects double-digit annual revenue growth from Taiwan’s market this year.
The company’s shares closed at NT$141 in Taipei trading yesterday, down 1.4 percent from the previous day, but outperforming the TAIEX, which lost 2.43 percent.
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