HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday posted a NT$1.83 billion (US$62 million) loss for last quarter, its 9th consecutive quarterly loss, as its expansion into virtual-reality headsets has yet to bear fruit, it said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
On an annual basis, that was an improvement from the NT$2.22 billion loss it registered in the same period last year, but on a quarterly basis, it widened from a loss of NT$1.68 billion in the first quarter.
Second-quarter revenue was NT$1.34 billion, up 1.02 percent sequentially, but down 52.14 percent from a year earlier.
Photo: Wang Yi-hung, Taipei Times
Gross margin rose to 26.5 percent from 20.3 percent a year earlier, also up from 26.3 percent in the first quarter.
For the first half of this year, HTC posted a net loss of NT$3.5 billion, an improvement from a loss of NT$4.68 billion in the first half of last year. That represented a loss of NT$4.28 per share, better than its loss of NT$5.69 per share in the same period last year.
The company swung back briefly to a profit in the first quarter of 2018 by selling part of its smartphone unit to Alphabet Inc’s Google, resulting in a US$1.1 billion windfall. However, its downward spiral has continued with losing quarters ever since.
HTC has not lacked for innovation, introducing Exodus, the first blockchain smartphone, in 2018. In June, the company unveiled the HTC U20 5G, the first made in Taiwan 5G mobile phone.
The company has also diversified away from its core cellphone business by investing heavily in virtual-reality technology with its Vive range of headsets. However, its VR operations still account for only a small fraction of the company's sales.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) forecast that its wafer shipments this quarter would grow up to 7 percent sequentially and the factory utilization rate would rise to 75 percent, indicating that customers did not alter their ordering behavior due to the US President Donald Trump’s capricious US tariff policies. However, the uncertainty about US tariffs has weighed on the chipmaker’s business visibility for the second half of this year, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said at an online earnings conference yesterday. “Although the escalating trade tensions and global tariff policies have increased uncertainty in the semiconductor industry, we have not
RSS