HTC One delay pushes HTC’s profits to a scary new low

As Woody Allen said, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

When HTC reported its dismal, awful, very bad fourth quarter earnings in January, CEO Peter Chou said it was the end of his company’s struggles. Unsurprisingly, he was very, very wrong.

HTC is reporting first-quarter profits of $2.8 million, the lowest in the company’s history. Besides the obvious issues that have plagued HTC for multiple quarters, its latest decline can be pinned on the HTC One, which was delayed after suppliers decided they had lost faith in HTC’s potential as a customer. The result? HTC couldn’t get the proper camera components for the device, which was then pushed in to the middle of April.

Above: Disclaimer: Numbers in chart may be worse than they appear.

For HTC, the situation is pretty dire. The April delay means that the One will launch within days of the Galaxy S IV, which is backed by Samsung’s hefty advertising budget.

Fortunately, the One is a damn good phone (or so I’ve read), which should give HTC some semblance of a chance — assuming, of course, that the company can actually get the thing released.

Besides the One, HTC is also working on releasing the HTC First, the so-called Facebook phone that it announced last week. If things go well, that device could attract quite a few buyers, which would obviously be quite a welcome development for the perpetually beleaguered HTC.

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