HTC’s woes continue as revenue dropped to $333 million in 2019

Damien Wilde | Jan 6 2020 - 5:17 am PT

HTC continues to suffer a slow death as the former smartphone king saw a 57% dip in revenue over the previous year throughout 2019 to just $333 million.

The Taiwanese firm disclosed financial reports on Monday, with the shocking decline being all the more evident (via TechCrunch). These financial reports show that revenue for 2019 was just $333 million, down 57.8% from the $789 million posted in 2018.

Revenue has dropped by a staggering 87% since 2017 — where HTC grossed $2 billion. As pointed out by Bloomberg columnist Tim Culpan Apple now generates more revenue every two weeks from sales of their immensely popular AirPods than HTC does in an entire year.

HTC has scaled back its smartphone business drastically since selling off vast portions to Google over two years ago. The firm has since focused its efforts in virtual reality with the Vive line of VR headsets — although no sales figures have been forthcoming. The company has yet to release details on just its losses for Q4 2019, but considering HTC chalked up losses in every quarter throughout 2019, we expect yet more bad news.

HTC revenue fell to just $330m last year.
That’s an 84% drop in 2 years.

In context: Apple now gets more from selling AirPods in a fortnight than HTC gets from selling *everything* in a year pic.twitter.com/6GF3EAgGd3

— Tim Culpan (@tculpan) January 6, 2020

We’ve seen the firm almost abandon the premium smartphone segment and focus efforts in the budget and mid-range market in regions such as India. HTC has also released several blockchain-optimized devices over the past few years to little acclaim.

It’s sad to see such an innovative champion for the Android platform struggling, but without innovation or a product catalogue to speak of, it doesn’t come as a great surprise.