Taiwan's top smartphone maker HTC said Monday its fourth quarter net
profit plunged 91 percent from a year ago, with analysts blaming the
drop to stiff competition from Apple and Samsung.
Net profit in the
three months to December totalled Tw$1.0 billion ($34.5 million),
compared with Tw$10.94 billion recorded in the same period in 2011,
while sales declined 41 percent to Tw$60 billion.
While analysts
said the firm was hit by the popularity of Apple's iPhone and the Galaxy
by Samsung, they argued that its performance was bottoming out and
would slowly regain momentum from the from the next three months thanks
to the launch of new models.
"For HTC, the worst is over," Mars Hsu of Grand Cathay Pacific told AFP.
HTC
last month unveiled Butterfly, its first smartphone featuring a
five-inch screen that has a density of 440 pixels per inch and full HD
resolution.
"Market reactions have been pretty good," Hsu said,
adding that the new gadget is expected to help its sales from the first
quarter although pressure from Apple and Samsung as well as Chinese
competitors will remain.
HTC sells its own smartphones and also makes handsets for a number of leading US companies, including Google's Nexus One.