HTC mobile phone world fierce mainland market encountered parallel problems

The volume of shipments doubled throughout the year. This is the 2010 answer sheet that Taiwan HTC has just delivered.

The recent financial report released by HTC recently showed that: Throughout 2010, global shipments of HTC handsets reached 24.67 million, an increase of 111% compared with 11.71 million in 2009; revenues also increased nearly one-fold from the previous year, reaching NT$278.8 billion; net profit increased by 75% year-on-year.

However, the growth of HTC sales last year was mainly from the North American and European markets. In 2011, the proper resolution of parallel imports became the key to sales growth in mainland China.

Thanks to the rapid rise of the Android camp, HTC, which successfully bet on the open system, achieved a bumper harvest in 2010 and shipments continued to climb. According to HTC's statistics, HTC's mobile phone sales in the first quarter of 2010 were 3.3 million units, followed by an increase of nearly 2 million units per quarter, and shipments to 9.1 million units in the fourth quarter.

In addition, the average unit price of HTC also rose from 339 US dollars at the beginning of the year to 364 US dollars, indicating that the positioning of high-end smartphones has gradually stabilized. At present, HTC is already the fourth largest smartphone manufacturer in the world.

“We will continue to drive growth in the Americas and Europe and accelerate the Asian market in 2011.” HTC management stated in the fourth-quarter operating performance briefing. In addition, following the launch of Sprint and T-Mobile's first 4G product in 2010, HTC launched 4G smart phones with Verizon and AT&T at this year's CES show. HTC said, "We hope that the newly released 4G products will continue to drive sales growth in 2011."

In fact, HTC's current focus is still on the North American market. The financial report shows that in HTC's regional sales statistics for 2010, North America accounted for 50.6% of total revenue, and European market accounted for 32.3%. In contrast, the Asian market plus other regions accounted for only 17.1%.

Especially in the Chinese market, although there are many users of HTC, most of them are purchased through parallel channels, and the licensed sales volume is not optimistic. "One is because there are not many licensed models, and the second is higher pricing, especially compared with parallel imports." Analyst International analyst Lu Libin said.

HTC officially announced its entry into China with its own brand in July last year, bid farewell to the era of adopting Dopod brand. However, before this, people have become accustomed to buying HTC parallel products, and the currently licensed product lines and pricing have no advantage over parallel imports. Lu Libin said, "HTC's own brand positioning is a high-end smart machine, and the price difference between licensed and parallel imports is the biggest problem."

For HTC, it seeks a shortcut for operators to cooperate with or expand sales in mainland China in 2011, because the operator's subsidies can compensate for the price disadvantage of mainstream products to some extent.

According to sources, Taiwanese companies including HTC are looking forward to the visit of Wang Xiaochu, head of China Telecom, on February 22. It is expected that China Telecom will purchase 60 million 3G mobile phones, and the purchase amount may reach 240 billion yuan. Taiwan Dollar (USD 8.256 billion).

Taiwan currently has a complete supply chain for CDMA handsets, Viatron Technologies Inc., which is owned by VIA, is a major supplier of CDMA2000 mobile phone chips, and HTC is a major mobile phone provider for China Telecom.