HTC sees 30% drop in sales in November

It's going to be a lean Christmas over at HTC HQ, as the company has announced a 30 per cent fall in sales of its handsets and tablets in November 2011.

The less than brilliant November sales cost the company T$14 billion (£297.6 million) of income compared to the money it made in October, and also represented a 20 per cent drop from November 2010.

The tumbling figures don't come entirely as a surprise though; in late November HTC revised its profit forecasts for the year downwards by 20 per cent, possibly because it saw how badly the month's sales were going.

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One analyst, John Strand of Strand Consult, posits that HTC's financial instability shows "how volatile the mobile device market is", given the company's relative strength at the beginning of 2011.

We saw crowing report after crowing report come from the HTC camp, with record profits reported in April and June – which means that the 20 per cent drop in sales may be comparatively massive, but might not affect the company's coffers too much.

But this year hasn't seen all that many groundbreaking devices leave the HTC stable, with its first tablet, the HTC Flyer, failing to get anyone's pulses racing (even though it comes with a stylus – what gives?).

Still, there's always 2012: we're hoping to see a bumper crop of smartphones returning HTC to form, from the quad-core HTC Edge and the sleek-looking HTC Ville both firm staples of the rumour-mill's current diet.

And let's not forget the HTC Quattro, a quad-core tablet that we're hoping will prove a little more enticing than the Flyer. Roll on Mobile World Congress 2012.

From Reuters