HTC Corp (宏達電) expects smartphone sales in Taiwan to climb by a double-digit percentage this quarter from last quarter, fueled by the launches of flagship and mid-end handsets, a top executive said yesterday.
Sales of the company’s HTC 10 smartphone in the firm’s home market exceeded its expectations, HTC North Asia president Jack Tong (董俊良) told Central News Agency on the sidelines of a product launch ceremony.
HTC launched a flagship model in the Taiwan market at the beginning of last month, and yesterday introduced two mid-tier smartphones — the HTC Desire 830 ,priced at NT$9,990 (US$307.40), and the HTC Desire 825, which retails at NT$7,990.
Apart from expectations of improved sales, revenue in the Taiwanese market this quarter is also expected to outpace the figure for the first quarter, Tong said.
In related news, the company on Monday night said it is to sell a plot of land at its manufacturing plant in Taoyuan for NT$2.88 billion, as part of its continued efforts to lower operation costs and improve its efficiency.
This the second time in the past six months that HTC has sold plots of its land at its Taoyuan plant. In December last year, it agreed to sell a parcel of land and a building at the plant to Inventec Corp (英業達) for NT$6.06 billion.
Given that the 13,576.2 ping (4,106.8m2) plot of land in the current sale does not house any of the firm’s production facilities, the transaction will not affect the company’s production capacity, HTC said.
The company said that the purpose of selling the property is not to narrow the size of its net losses, but to optimize the efficiency of its unused land.
The company declined to disclose any information about the individual buyer, saying that unlike the previous land transaction, the buyer is not one of HTC’s companies or subsidaries.
“A non-operating gain of NT$990 million will be booked at the end of this quarter or at the beginning of next quarter,” an HTC official said by telephone.
The company is likely to shed more light on its business outlook for this quarter during a teleconference on Monday next week.
In the first quarter, the company posted consolidated revenue of NT$14.82 billion, down 64.31 percent from the NT$41.52 billion posted in the same period last year.
HTC shares declined 0.73 percent to NT$81.8 in Taipei trading yesterday, outperforming the TAIEX, which fell 1 percent.
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