HTC Profits Fall 70 Percent, Company Betting on HTC One X, Evo 4G LTE

HTC, following the April 2011 introduction of the Droid Incredible, was hailed as a newly elite brand in the U.S. smartphone market. Boasting quarter-to-quarter growth of 30 percent, one analyst celebrated it as having gone €œfrom the edge to the cutting edge.€ Almost exactly a year later, on the heels of its HTC Evo 4G LTE introduction and HTC One X release, as well as the eve of its fiscal first quarter 2012 results announcement, the company is looking more like a dropout than darling.

HTC€™s first quarter net income was $151 million, the company announced on its Website April 6, in advance of its full earnings announcement. The figure represents a 70 percent decline from a year earlier, according to a report from Bloomberg, and follows from mistakes made during the quarter before.

€œWe simply dropped the ball on products in the fourth quarter,€ HTC CFO Winston Yung said during a Feb. 6 conference call, according to the report. €œThe form factor could be better and the product design could be better. So we€™ve learned lessons from the fourth-quarter products.€

Apple€™s iPhone continues to sell at a pace that has no mercy on competitors not swinging for the fences, and HTC has additionally lost market share to fellow-Android-supports Samsung, Motorola and LG Electronics. Nokia, with its high-end Lumia 900, which has access to AT&T€™s LTE network and goes on sale April 8 for just $100, also hopes to be a market disruptor.

In February, HTC introduced the One, an LTE-enabled device running Android €œIce Cream Sandwich€ and HTC€™s Sense 4 user interface and featuring a 4.7 display and a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor. To sweeten the deal HTC partnered with cloud storage provider Dropbox to offer 25 gigabytes of free cloud storage for two years. It€™ll come in three flavors€”X, S and V.

In a review of the X, a global version and the most powerful, The Verge€™s Chris Ziegler described it as €œconservatively €¦ the most important event in the company€™s history since the release of the groundbreaking Evo 4G€ and a device that oozes HTC from every nook and cranny. €œThere€™s no superfluous, counterproductive meddling in the design process from carriers,€ he writes, suspecting all the extra cooks have been shooed to the dining room.

The Evo 4G LTE, which will go on sale May 7, also runs Ice Cream Sandwich, features a 4.7-inch display and 1.5GHz processor, and will have access to Sprint€™s LTE network. HTC€™s plans these days, President Jason Mackenzie said at an April 4 New York City event for the device, is to make fewer phones but to make them better€”a sentiment that echoes January comments made by Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha, about Motorola€™s plans for its Android lineup.

In March, HTC reported that consolidated sales were up from February, though still down compared to its year-ago results.

€œIf it can keep up the trend seen in March,€ Yuanta Securities analyst Bonnie Chang told Reuters, €œwe would expect to see a pretty strong [second quarter].€