HTC Corp (宏達電) chairwoman and chief executive officer Cher Wang (王雪紅) yesterday apologized to shareholders for the company’s disappointing performance in the past year, but avoided answering shareholders’ questions on when HTC would swing back to profit.
“I understand that an apology would not solve the issues, but I hope the shareholders have faith in HTC, as we have built a solid foundation for success through our efforts in VR [virtual reality] business in the past year,” Wang said at the company’s annual general meeting in Taoyuan.
The smartphone company reported a net loss of NT$15.53 billion (US$477.85 million), or NT$18.79 per share, for last year, compared with a net income of NT$2.35 billion, or NT$1.8 per share, in the previous year.
Photo: CNA
Wang said it is not difficult to make HTC’s VR business profitable, but the company has to seek strategic partners and invest more in contents and platforms in a bid to build a VR ecosystem and secure a leading position in the emerging market.
She said the company in April launched a US$100 million accelerator program for VR start-ups in Taipei, Beijing and San Francisco.
HTC plans to expand the program to speed up the technology’s development and increase contents for its VR headset Vive, she added.
Given that the VR business would play the most important role in HTC’s growth in the next 10 years, the company has established a wholly owned VR subsidiary, Wang said.
Chang Chia-lin (張嘉臨), head of HTC’s global sales division, said HTC might allow future strategic partners to invest “a small amount” of stakes in the subsidiary, but ensured that it would have no affect on the interests of HTC shareholders in the VR subsidiary, as HTC is to remain the largest shareholder.
Chang said the company has developed several new business models in the VR ecosystem for long-term growth, but he declined to elaborate on the details of the business models due to increasing international competition.
In response to shareholders’ concerns regarding HTC’s troubled smartphone business, Chang said the sales performance of this year’s flagship model M10 is much better than the last year’s M9.
Chang said sales of M9 last year were much lower than the company’s expectations, causing problems and dragging HTC’s overall performance from the second quarter of last year to the first quarter of this year.
Through several quarters of efforts, HTC has lowered 40 percent of its operational costs in the second quarter of this year, compared with the same period last year, he said.
With improvement in user experience and inventory management, M10 has generated profits at retail channels since it was launched at the beginning of this quarter, Chang said.
The robust demand for M10 has also helped drive up demand for HTC’s other smartphones by about 20 percent, he added.
HTC shares dropped 1.73 percent to close at NT$90.8 in Taipei trading yesterday.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that its investment plan in Arizona is going according to schedule, following a local media report claiming that the company is planning to break ground on its third wafer fab in the US in June. In a statement, TSMC said it does not comment on market speculation, but that its investments in Arizona are proceeding well. TSMC is investing more than US$65 billion in Arizona to build three advanced wafer fabs. The first one has started production using the 4-nanometer (nm) process, while the second one would start mass production using the
A TAIWAN DEAL: TSMC is in early talks to fully operate Intel’s US semiconductor factories in a deal first raised by Trump officials, but Intel’s interest is uncertain Broadcom Inc has had informal talks with its advisers about making a bid for Intel Corp’s chip-design and marketing business, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Nothing has been submitted to Intel and Broadcom could decide not to pursue a deal, according to the Journal. Bloomberg News earlier reported that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is in early talks for a controlling stake in Intel’s factories at the request of officials at US President Donald Trump’s administration, as the president looks to boost US manufacturing and maintain the country’s leadership in critical technologies. Trump officials raised the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
RSS