Smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) has reported another quarterly net loss in the third quarter of the year, although its gross margin continued to improve.
In a statement on Tuesday, HTC said that it reported a net loss of NT$770 million (US$27.63 million) in the July-to-September period, higher than the NT$550 million net loss a quarter earlier.
Hurt by its struggling smartphone business, HTC has run a net loss every quarter since the second quarter of 2015, except for the first quarter of 2018, when an asset sale helped it post a quarterly net profit.
Photo courtesy of HTC Corp via CNA
Its losses per share in the third quarter rose for the first time in five quarters to NT$0.94, from NT$0.68 in the second quarter, as it continued to encounter stiff competition in the global smartphone market.
However, HTC’s gross margin — the difference between revenue and cost of goods sold — continued to climb in the third quarter to 31.6 percent from 29.9 percent in the second quarter.
In addition, HTC’s operating loss fell to NT$880 million in the third quarter from NT$1.05 billion in the second quarter, helped by a slightly improved operating margin — the difference between sales, the cost of goods sold and operating expenses — of minus-65.8 percent, compared with minus-77.8 percent in the second quarter.
Analysts said that the improving gross margin largely reflected HTC’s efforts to diversify its product mix and develop its virtual reality business to take pressure off its lackluster smartphone sales.
In September alone, HTC posted consolidated sales of NT$601 million, up 64 percent from a year earlier.
It was the company’s second-highest monthly sales figure for the year, behind its NT$664 million in June.
The increase in September sales came after the company unveiled the HTC Vive Pro 2 virtual reality (VR) headset.
Still, HTC’s consolidated sales for the third quarter fell by 0.7 percent from a quarter earlier to NT$1.34 billion.
HTC, which launched its first VR headset — the HTC Vive — in 2015, has seen rising demand for its VR gadgets amid a booming stay-at-home economy.
The latest VR gadget from HTC — the Vive Flow — went on sale in Taiwan on Monday.
The lightweight, compact immersive glasses, weighing no more than 189g, have an expansive 100° field of view, 3.2K resolution, a 75 Hertz refresh rate and full 3D spatial audio that can also connect to external Bluetooth earphones, the company said.
Analysts have said that the portable Vive Flow is HTC’s attempt to embrace the so-called “metaverse” concept talked up by Facebook Inc chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg since July.
The metaverse — a term coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 book Snow Crash — refers to a digital world where people can move between devices and communicate in a virtual environment.
Charles Huang (黃昭穎), general manager for the HTC Vive in the Asia-Pacific region, said that the Vive Flow is expected to go on sale in other countries later in the fourth quarter or in the first quarter of next year.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
RESHAPING COMMERCE: Major industrialized economies accepted 15 percent duties on their products, while charges on items from Mexico, Canada and China are even bigger US President Donald Trump has unveiled a slew of new tariffs that boosted the average US rate on goods from across the world, forging ahead with his turbulent effort to reshape international commerce. The baseline rates for many trading partners remain unchanged at 10 percent from the duties Trump imposed in April, easing the worst fears of investors after the president had previously said they could double. Yet his move to raise tariffs on some Canadian goods to 35 percent threatens to inject fresh tensions into an already strained relationship, while nations such as Switzerland and New Zealand also saw increased
RSS