HTC
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Yes, HTC is working on a ‘blockchain phone’
A few weeks ahead of its latest flagship announcement, HTC just revealed another piece of hardware. While the Taiwanese company has consolidated much of its mobile offerings in recent years, it announced today at the Consensus 2018 blockchain conference in New York that its upcoming Exodus handset is embracing everyone’s favorite tech buzzword.
So, what makes a phone a blockchain phone, exactly? Security and cryptocurrency support, mostly. According to HTC’s Exodus landing page, “Our vision is to expand the blockchain ecosystem by creating the world’s first phone dedicated to decentralized applications and security. With the release of the HTC Exodus we can now make this a reality.”
The Exodus will support Bitcoin and Ethereum, among others, courtesy of a universal wallet, secure hardware and decentralized apps. According to The Next Web, HTC has also outlined plans to create a native blockchain network, whereby cryptocurrency can be traded amongst Exodus users. Naturally, users will also be able to purchase the phone itself using cryptocurrency. That price and the release date, however, have yet to be revealed.
There’s not really a lot of information beyond that and the above drawing, but HTC is clearly gunning to make a splash as its numbers have shrunk in overall proportion to a declining smartphone market. Even with rapidly increasing awareness and interest in the cryptocurrency space, however, it’s hard to imagine Exodus making much of a splash.
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HTC confirms its newest flagship smartphone will arrive May 23
Perennial smartphone struggler HTC has revealed its newest smartphone — the U12/U12+ — will launch on May 23. The big spoiler from the company is that the phone will include… components.
Coming Soon. A phone that is more than the sum of its specs. pic.twitter.com/m2skJSK0qt
— HTC (@htc) May 3, 2018
That isn’t exactly an informative teaser, but we do actually have a flavor for what HTC will bring to market.
Serial leaker Evan Blass, writing for VentureBeat, revealed a dual-camera setup on the reverse of the phone, with a Snapdragon 845 chipset, 6GB of RAM and either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage under the hood.
HTC badly needs this device to be a winner. Its most recent results for Q4 2017 were grim with a loss $337 million from total sales of $540 million. The company did get a cash boost from a $1.1 billion deal to sell some of its tech and talent to Google, but that wasn’t reflected in these results.
The firm is putting that capital to use for “greater investment in emerging technologies” that it says will be “vital across all of our businesses and present significant long-term growth opportunities.” The fruits of that aren’t likely to be seen for a while yet.
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HTC had a terrible holiday quarter
Smartphone and VR headset maker HTC has published its consolidated results for Q4 2017 — and it makes for grim reading.
The topline figures are:
- Flat quarterly revenue of NT$15.7 billion (~$540M) with gross margin of -30.8%
- Quarterly operating loss of NT$9.6 billion (~$330M) with operating margin of -60.8%
- Quarterly net loss after tax: NT$9.8 billion (~$337M), or -NT$11.93 (-$0.41) per share
HTC says this latest quarterly loss was due to “market competition, product mix, pricing, and recognized inventory write-downs”. So pretty much a full house of operational and business problems.
The one bright spot for HTC’s business is a deal worth $1.1BN, in which Google acquired a chunk of HTC’s hardware business — which was completed at the end of January.
That one-off cash injection is not reflected in the Q4 results but will rather give some passing uplift to HTC’s Q1 2018 results.
HTC says it will be using the Google windfall for “greater investment in emerging technologies”, writing that they will be “vital across all of our businesses and present significant long-term growth opportunities”.
There’s no doubt that any business revival would require hefty investment. But exactly what long-term growth opportunities HTC believes it can capture is questionable, given how fiercely competitive the smartphone market continues to be (with Chinese OEMs making what running there is in a shrinking global market); and how the VR market — which HTC bet big on in 2015, with Vive and Valve, to try to diversify beyond mobile — has hardly turned out to be the next major computing paradigm. Not yet anyway.
So the emphasis really is on the “long-term” earning potential of VR — say five or even ten years hence.
HTC flags the launch of its VIVE Focus standalone VR system in China — which it last week said it would also be bringing to the UK and other global markets later this year — and the launch of a VIVE Pro premium PC VR system in January, which it was showing off at CES, as examples of focused product innovation in the VR space.
Following a strategic business review aimed at optimizing its teams and processes — both for smartphones and VR — it also says it now has “a series of measures in place to enable stronger execution”, and is touting fresh innovations coming across its markets this year.
But HTC is going to need a whole lot more than squeezable gimmicks and shiny finishes to lift out of these doldrums.
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HTC debuts original Ready Player One content for the Vive
While some don’t care for the hit novel Ready Player One, it’s hard to deny that the book captured the hearts and minds of millions as it climbed the NYT Bestseller’s list in 2011. At the end of this month, a film adaptation of the book, directed by Stephen Spielberg, will be released in theaters. And given the book’s heavy focus on VR, it makes sense that HTC wants to… Read More
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HTC’s smartphone chief and ex-CFO, Chialin Chang, resigns
What to expect from Mobile World Congress 2018
The world’s largest phone show is set for Barcelona later this month, and it’s shaping up to be an interesting one — particularly in the wake of what amounted to an extremely lackluster CES last month. We’re still a couple of weeks out from the actual event, but the rumors have already started flying. Read More
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Google completes its $1.1B deal to buy a chunk of HTC’s smartphone division
Google has announced the completion of its $1.1 billion deal to buy a large slice of HTC’s hardware business.
The acquisition was announced back in September 2017 but now it has passed the requisite approvals and is finalized. Beyond the transfer of over 2,000 engineers from HTC — that’s around one-fifth of HTC’s engineering team — Google will also receive… Read More
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HTC intros a $349 version of the U11
I honestly thought HTC had sent the wrong phone in the mail when the U11 Life arrived. The new phone looks almost identical to its namesake at first glance — and that’s by design. Of course, on closer inspection, the differences are pretty clear, particularly when you’ve got the standard U11 on-hand.
The Life is essentially the budget version of HTC’s latest flagship… Read More
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A history of HTC in 12 devices
HTC on Friday basically sold a huge portion of itself to Google, which is clearly hoping to use the company’s talent for hardware in its own push for self-branded devices. It’s the end of an era for a major company that has been a friend to Google and Android for a decade — perfect timing for a little retrospective on HTC’s many and varied devices. Read More
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HTC is to suspend trading of its stock on the TWSE tomorrow, ahead of what it says will be the release of “material information” pertaining to its business.