
HTC Is Now Essentially Worthless (And Insecure) - rhapsodyv
http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/10/htc-is-now-essentially-worthless-and-insecure/?ncid=rss
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guelo
No mention of Apple's successful legal attack on HTC over garbage patents like
slide-to-unlock. Apple was able to block imports of HTC phones in 2012 back
when they had the hot Evo brand and were introducing the One brand. HTC
settled for an undisclosed amount that HTC has to pay Apple for every unit it
sells. They have not been able to regain momentum since.

~~~
jakobegger
I guess it's not mentioned because it's irrelevant? The people on HN seem to
care a lot about lawsuits and companies copying eachothers features, but most
people buying smartphones couldn't care less. People don't care who invented
something first or who sues who, people just pick whatever seems to be the
best product that they can afford.

I don't think that HTC failed because of a lawsuit; Samsung was pretty
successful despite all the lawsuits, and Apple is similarly killing it despite
constantly being sued from all kinds of companies.

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duiker101
How is having to pay another company a margin of what you make on every unit
not relevant? I doubt it's going to be small sum.

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diminish
As Android soars to over 80% market share cheaper Chinese and Indian brands
are dominating the market similar to OEM PC market. Vivo, ZTE, Alcatel,
Coolpad, Lenovo, Huawei are a leader kicking Sony, LG, HTC out the market as
they did with BlackBerry, Motorola, Nokia.[1]

Android One will set the bar even lower. Soon a phablet with 5/6" screen, 4GB
memory, a quad core CPU and over 16GB storage with Android One may kill all
Android Flagships if Google update promise work fine.

Smartphone conversion is topping and market is saturating. Market is reif for
a new killer gadget but I don't think it is a watch.

[1] [http://communities-
dominate.blogs.com/brands/2015/08/smartph...](http://communities-
dominate.blogs.com/brands/2015/08/smartphone-wars-q2-scorecard.html)

~~~
meric
I would love a gadget that doesn't require my eyes.

If I get a whatsapp message, why should I have to look at the screen to see
what it says?

Looks like this is pretty cool:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.RSen.Comma...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.RSen.Commandr&hl=en)

But Siri can't do it.

~~~
untog
I'd prefer my eyes over my ears and voice. Just imagine a train car full of
people talking to their phones.

~~~
ghshephard
Have you ever watched (heard) someone talking with the mic held between their
lips/teeth - you can be a couple feet away from them and not hear them over
the sound of the train/bus. It's actually pretty awesome.

~~~
techsupporter
Which is really annoying for the people sitting adjacent or across from them.
Add more people speaking into their phones and the noise volume tends to go
up.

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steve19
They made some bad technology bets. They bet that a low light camera sensor
(ie low megapixel, it has 4 MP) would do better in the market than the high
megapixel camera .... big, big mistake. Whatever the gain in low light,
consumers want a high resolution photo they can crop.

A couple of years ago I met the guy who owns the company that manufacturers
the phone lenses. A real genius. As he passionately talked about optics I was
busy thinking to myself "your profits are doomed and you dont know it"

~~~
crimsonalucard
I own an htc one. HTC has made many mistakes, the camera was not one of them.
All photographers know that the amount megapixels do not correlate with a good
picture.

In fact back when the HTC one was first released ,reviewers hailed it as the
best phones in the market.

~~~
interpol_p
While I agree that the megapixel count is pretty irrelevant. I'd say that the
biggest advantage Apple have camera wise is a really good, really fast image
processing pipeline.

The absolute best feature in a mobile camera is the time-to-capture. The
faster it is, the faster you get the shot you want.

I'd also argue that the iPhone 5 default camera app/calibration/settings just
produced better shots, faster, than the HTC One default camera.

~~~
rcthompson
This is absolutely true. Apple devices take the picture when you press the
button. When you press the capture button an an Android device, it sits around
for a random delay between half a second and five seconds, maybe takes some
time to focus, and finally captures the image. By which time the shot you set
up is most likely over. And you can't learn the delay and anticipate the
timing, because it's not even consistent - it's random.

If anyone knows of an Android device that even comes close to the
responsiveness of an Apple device, I'd love to know about it.

~~~
crdb
My Xiaomi Mi 4i on normal mode snaps the shot when you touch the button.

I discovered this accidentally by taking a series of 12 shots, expecting the
normal Android screen freeze and thinking "damn, the camera app is broken",
then noticing that the "gallery" kept changing slightly.

This is a lot of fun with Google Photos as once the photos auto-upload, Google
will usually stitch them together into a sort of gif (could be a gif for all I
know, I never checked the file type). So you can still have a "movie" even in
occasions where you don't have time to get the camera out and switch it to
movie mode.

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x0054
How do I get me some HTC stock? I never purchased international stock before,
but if it's really trading for below cash, it might be a good buy. Something
to research tomorrow.

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rockinghigh
Look up HTCCY. Large international companies can be traded in the US via ADRs.

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skrebbel
tl;dr: "HTC Is Now Essentially Worthless". That's it.

This article is devoid of any content past the headline. TechCrunch is
becoming worse than BuzzFeed.

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lifeisstillgood
> The profit on an average Android phone is about a penny.

You what now? How? Is that wholesale - but even so...

this is fairly shocking news, but with margins like that we are just expecting
manufacturers to run at a loss whilst funding from other revenue (Samsung
presumably makes money from consumer electronics elsewhere)

~~~
saurik
Samsung is different than the average device: they actually have a profit
margin. It is essentially Apple vs. Samsung, with the latter propped up by
subsidized software from Google as part of a transparent proxy war, in a
battle for the smartphone market... _no one else matters_.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-05-16/google-
makes...](http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-05-16/google-makes-
android-but-samsung-makes-all-the-money)

~~~
hkmurakami
I would contend that Xiaomi could upend Samsung in China, arguably the most
important market in the world.

But other than that, I 100% agree with you.

~~~
blackoil
Also in India, not the biggest market, but reasonably big and growing.

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collyw
"The profit on an average Android phone is about a penny."

That sounds pretty unlikely to me. Is there anywhere this is demonstrated in
more detail?

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anjc
Eh maybe somebody can explain for me. This is surely just some aberration of
using enterprise value as a metric for company health, while ignoring other
important metrics, right?

Like the 'value' of the company, as described here, is partially based on
market sentiment, but doesn't mean that the company is necessarily any less
profitable or healthy than last year...? Surely many companies go in and out
of having "zero value" just as a matter of course, in that case, given that
shareprices could go down for reasons other than a decline in net profit, and
cash assets could go down for reasons other than ill-health.

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AndrewKemendo
I wonder what this means for the Vive.

~~~
spir
Very surprised to see no other comments related to Vive. Search and you'll
find rave reviews of the Vive, which apparently launches this Christmas, and
made the incredible decision to natively support full-room (15x15 feet)
virtual reality. I can't find a bad review for this thing.

Valve probably negotiated one heck of a deal, but fact remains that HTC finds
themselves in an existential strategic partnership with one of the strongest,
most capable high-tech companies in the world. Valve is surely committed to
the Vive and HTC couldn't dream of a better partner. This matters more than
you'd think from the coverage of HTC's troubles.

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AdmiralAsshat
As someone still using an HTC One M7 and loves it, I don't think HTC's heart
is in it anymore. The M9 was a retread of the M8, which itself was just a
"refinement" of the M7. And somehow, despite two generations of refinement,
the camera is still mediocre.[0] To boot, the HTC-built Nexus 9 got
disappointing reviews, mostly due to build quality.

I wouldn't be surprised if they get out of the smartphone business altogether
in the next few years to focus on stuff like the Vive or the RE camera.

[0][http://www.forbes.com/sites/ianmorris/2015/05/25/htc-
one-m9-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ianmorris/2015/05/25/htc-
one-m9-camera-fails-in-tests-its-worse-than-a-three-year-old-iphone-4s/)

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PebblesHD
I can still remember a time when an HTC PDA was literally the hottest tech on
the market. How fascinating it is to see how much has changed in less than a
decade.

~~~
pjmlp
Their continuous broken promises to provide upgrades, only to dismiss them at
the very last minute is what happened.

On my case the way they handled the HTC Desire upgrade to 2.3 did it for me.

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rtpg
>The profit on an average Android phone is about a penny.

This is an exageration right? I know we're giving $10 to MSFT for every phone
or whatever, but a penny?

~~~
hkmurakami
Remember the low end models that have large market share in developing
countries.

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raines_hof
When branding is only skin deep and you're competing on price your days are
numbered, from day 1.

