HTC sales slump by 68 per cent in June

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JUNE HAS BEEN A HOT month for the UK, but it's had a chilling effect on HTC sales which plummeted by a hefty 68 per cent, Reuters reports.

That's the biggest decline in sales the Taiwanese electronics firm has suffered in more than two years and doesn't bode well for the company.

HTC was once a high flyer in the smartphone arena with handsets like the HTC One propelling it to success. But then a rather confusing array of handsets and failure to capture the attention of Android phone fans with more recent releases have seen the company's sales nosedive.

Even working with every-thing-we-tough-turns-to-gold gaming giant Valve on the HTC Vive virtual reality headset failed to swing HTC well into the black.

HTC has now suffered 11 consecutive quarters in financial loss, and despite reports that it's been slicing staff to cut costs, the company looks like it has found its way onto a ship that's sailing on a one way trip to Borksville.

"In the high-end segment, the sales of their flagship phone this year has been lower than expected, leading to lower market share," an unnamed analyst at market research house Trendforce told Reuters.

"As for HTC's middle-end and entry-level series, the new models feature neither new specs nor high performance-price ratio, influencing the sales."

This isn't that surprising given that the mid-range smartphone market is a fiercely competitive arena with Samsung taking features from its high-end Galaxy flagships and pushing them down into cheaper A-series phones, and the OnePlus 6 offers a superb handset with flagship-features and a much cheaper price than HTC's U12+ top-dog mobile.

HTC will need to come up with some move or plan to turn its fortunes around pretty sharpish. But given HTC has sold a load of smartphone talent to Google, it might be lacking in the skills and experience to do so. For the time being, it's a case of watch this space. µ