HTC company profits plunge as One delays bite

Company quarterly performance stutters despite phone's critical success

HTC has reported record low profits for the first quarter of 2013, following ongoing delays of the release for its flagship One smartphone.

The Taiwanese firm revealed that it had posted a net profit of just £1.9m in its January-March first quarter on Monday.

The figure marks a severe decline when compared to the £21.7m HTC reported in the prior quarter and £237m figure in Q1 2012.

The news follows extensive delays to HTC's flagship One handset, which was released in just three countries, rather than the originally intended 80, last month.

Ovum analyst Tony Cripps told V3 that the smartphone's delayed release could also affect HTC's second quarter performance.

"The delays don't help. Something HTC have been reasonably well known for in the past is unveiling products and then bringing them to market fairly quickly," Cripps told V3.

"If they don't arrive in the market as planned then that may well have a longer term impact on the sales of those devices."

Crisps said that HTC would still have struggled even without the delay thanks to the dominance of larger companies like Samsung and Apple.

"What it [HTC's performance] indicates is that this is a tough market to be in right now," said Cripps.

"That's especially true if you're a company like HTC which is focused entirely around smartphones and trying to compete with a number of really big beasts that can throw a lot more cash at the problem and have more vertical integration and control over the supply chain."

Samsung and Apple are currently ranked as the world's two top selling smartphone vendors by numerous analyst houses.

Most recently research house Gartner reported that Apple and Samsung's combined share of the market grew to 52 percent in the last three months of 2012 thanks to strong iPhone and Galaxy handset sales.

Crisps forecast that Apple and Samsung's domination will likely lead to a massive shift in the smartphone market as companies explore new ways to compete with the two..

"I think the one thing we can expect is more change in the market overall. If you go back to the launch of the iPhone and then the launch of Android and the uptake of the two then you see the whole smartphone and device market was turned on its head," he said.

"I think it's not an unreasonable to think that there's yet more change about to happen. Precisely what form that'll take is difficult to say."

For an in-depth look at the HTC One check out V3's full written review of watch the video below.