HTC yet again continues to slide downwards with drops in revenue and profits

HTC has released the financial report for Q4 2012, which shows the company continuing to struggle in the competitive mobile phone industry. We've previously covered HTC's down spiral through recent months, but it's set to continue despite the launch of new hardware, including the Windows Phone 8X.

HTC revenue and profits continued to fall in the final quarter of 2012, with the company reporting NT$60 billion ($2.03 billion US), down from NT $70.2 billion in Q3. The report also illustrated a gross margin of 23 percent and operating margin of just 1 percent - down from 25 and 7 percent respectively. Net profit and earnings per share fell as well, the former from NT$3.9 billion to NT$1 billion, while the latter collapsed from NT$4.7 to NT$1.21.

It's not looking positive either as HTC expects the situation to worsen in the first quarter of 2013, predicting Q1 revenue to be in the region of NT$50-60 billion, with a gross profit margin between 21 and 32 percent and operating margins between 0.5 and 1 percent. That said, HTC CERO Peter Chou is relatively optimistic publicly about the company's prospects this year:

"We continue to focus on the most important element of our business: innovation. Our teams are delivering beautifully designed phones, containing the newest technological advancements. Outstanding products, paired with improvements in our marketing execution and overall readiness give us reason to feel optimistic about the progress we will make in 2013."

HTC is still releasing its Windows Phone hardware into the wild with mobile operators only just catching on and pushing out the smartphones to consumers. We'll take a gamble and bet that Q1 will be more troublesome for the company. It's a shame as both the 8X and 8S are great handsets and the manufacturer has surprised many with the innovative design.

via: Android Central