HTC burned another $101 million in the last three months
Much as we’d like to sugarcoat it, the unfortunate truth is that HTC is in trouble, and the situation is only getting worse. The phone maker has posted a third consecutive loss-making quarter, eating around $101 million (£69.6 million) in the last three months. A side-by-side comparison of the same period last year is even more doom-laden, since when it was generating a profit, it was only squeaking a meager $5.6 million. Last year, we asked if HTC was going to be the first really big Android manufacturer to slide into the sea. On this evidence, there’s very little that’s going to change our mind.
HTC’s euphemistic press release talks about “good momentum” for its (lower-end) Desire phones as well as the A9 being “well received.” Unfortunately, that hasn’t translated into sales, or critical acclaim, since our Chris Velazco said that the A9 was not “the winner this company needs.” The firm has also talked up its cost-cutting processes that are designed to make the company much leaner. HTC was able to shave a few million (Taiwanese) dollars from its operating costs by hacking chunks out of the Marketing and R&D budgets. Unfortunately, if a firm can’t spend its way out of trouble, then cutting R&D spending is only likely to prevent it from being to innovate its way to future success.
Now, the firm does have $1.1 billion in its back pocket, which means that it could live off these savings for at least another year without breaking a sweat. That should give the company time to reinvent itself as a leaner, meaner manufacturer of mobile devices. Unfortunately, the bottom has fallen out of the mobile market, and even Samsung is struggling to deal with missing profits and drooping sales. In fact, it’s possible that Android will never be a profitable business for anyone ever again. After all, Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi are capable of knocking out dirt-cheap handsets that aren’t garbage for near cost price.
HTC does have one slender hope, and that’s if its gambles with health and virtual reality pay off in a big way. The company launched its first wearable “ecosystem” with Under Armor at CES and has the brilliant Vive headset coming out shortly. But there’s no guarantee that either product will be a success, especially such a late-to-the-game fitness tracker like the UA Band. The Vive, meanwhile, is a deeply compelling product, but questions over its price and how mainstream VR is likely to go means it might not be an instant hit. Unfortunately, HTC needs an instant hit, or else.
Source: HTC (.PDF), (2)
Apple Receives Chairman’s Award for Historic Architectural Preservation in NYC
The New York City Landmarks Conservancy today announced that Apple has won its 2016 Chairman’s Award, due to the Cupertino company’s preservation and restoration of a few architecturally important locations within New York City (via iFun.de) [Google Translate].
Apple’s retail location in Grand Central Terminal
The Landmarks Conservancy specifically referred to Apple’s SoHo, West 14th Street, Upper East Side, and Grand Central retail stores as the reason behind choosing Apple for the Chairman’s Award. Each location selected has historical significance prior to Apple’s restoration, including a former banking complex built in 1921 and an old United States Post Office.
The Chairman’s Award began in 1988 to recognize “exceptional commitment to the protection and preservation of the rich architectural heritage of New York.” Apple will officially receive the award at the Chairman’s Luncheon on March 9.
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Indie darling ‘Gone Home’ hits UK consoles next week
It’s been an agonising wait, but Gone Home will soon be available on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in the UK. The game’s console debut was originally slated for mid-January, however some last minute certification issues meant its European release was put on hold. (It was still released in the US, however.) Those problems appear to have been sorted now, as The Fullbright Company today confirmed it’ll be arriving on the continent, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Russia, on February 12th.
So why should you care? Well, Gone Home made quite a splash when it first arrived on PC, Mac and Linux in 2013. It received some glowing reviews from the press and a smattering of awards for its interactive storytelling. Set in 1985, you take on the role of Kaitlin as she explores a mansion in Portland, Oregon. To say any more would ruin the experience — so I’ll merely suggest that if you haven’t played it before and care about narrative, this is a game you should play through at least once.
Now, how long is it until Tacoma comes out again?
Source: Gone Home (Twitter)
‘Counter-Strike’ player tricks cheaters into getting banned
Cheating has plagued the various incarnations of Counter-Strike practically since its servers went online in 1999 and one resourceful Redditor has had enough. User AndroidL created a trio of fake hacks for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that promised everything from unlimited ammo and health to some exotic viewing angles that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. Except instead of those exploits, the some 5,500 folks who downloaded them got a hell of a surprise: unwanted attention from Valve’s Anti Cheat system on Steam.
Even better is that AndroidL took a handful of screenshots of the hackers complaining about their accounts being marked as untrustworthy and later banned, or banned immediately after playing with the hacks installed. The schadenfreude is real here, folks. If you’d like to join in, the Reddit thread is rife with folks having a good chuckle at the lack of self-awareness of the hackers who complain about their accounts being targeted because they cheated, too.
The reality, though, is that thousands of banned accounts are basically a drop in the bucket. To that end, AndroidL has a message: “I’ll look into doing this sort of thing again.” Consider yourself warned, Counter-Strike ne’er-do-wells.
Court rules that felon has to wear GPS ankle device for life
A convicted pedophile from Wisconsin has no choice but to continue wearing the worst wearable device ever — a GPS ankle tracker — for the rest of his life. According to Ars Technica, the offender named Michael Belleau went to court to have the tracker removed. He explained that he had already served time (for sexually assaulting one boy and one girl) and isn’t on post-prison supervision. While the federal judge agreed with him, the appeals court sided with the state of Wisconsin that challenged the lower court’s decision. The Badger State passed a law in 2008 that requires convicted pedophiles to wear a GPS tracker till the day they die.
The appellate court judges said that the ankle monitor is only visible when the wearer’s pants hike up upon sitting down. Belleau’s reasoning that the violation of privacy he suffers whenever someone spots the anklet is against the Fourth Amendment didn’t fly with the judges either. They explained that the “Fourth Amendment does not mention privacy or create any right of privacy.” Further, they said that removing the anklet will only have a slight effect on his privacy anyway, since as a registered sex offender, his criminal records and home address are available online.
“[I]t’s not as if the Department of Corrections were following the plaintiff around,” the court said, defending the use of GPS monitors. Officials don’t monitor sex offenders’ every move, but they do look at where they’ve gone every night, so the police can be alerted if they’re in a place where someone was sexually assaulted.
Bottom line is that the court believes GPS monitors can help prevent sex offenders from committing the same crimes again, as proven by what it wrote in the document Ars posted:
It’s untrue that ‘the GPS device burdens liberty by its continuous surveillance of the offender’s activities. [It] just identifies locations; it doesn’t reveal what the wearer of the device is doing at any of the locations. And its ‘burden’ must in any event be balanced against the gain to society from requiring that the anklet monitor be worn. It is because of the need for such balancing that persons convicted of crimes, especially very serious crimes such as sexual offenses against minors, and especially very serious crimes that have high rates of recidivism such as sex crimes, have a diminished reasonable constitutionally protected expectation of privacy.
Source: Ars Technica
India edges past US as second largest smartphone market
India is now the second largest smartphone market in the world, behind China, according to the latest data collected by Counterpoint Research. Smartphone shipments grew by a healthy 15 percent annually, pushing the nation just past the 100 million unit milestone for the year, up from 81.1 million sales in 2014.
In total, there are now some 220 million active smartphone users in India, nudging the country ahead of the USA for the first time.
Overall phone sales in India have declined over the past year, as more users ditch old features phones in favour of better connected smartphones. LTE capable handsets were a major force in the country last year, with shipments growing 15 percent year-on-year to 25.3 million units in the fourth quarter. This is partly due to the falling price of LTE smartphones in the country.
https://live.amcharts.com/OWRmY/embed/
In India, Samsung is still the leading mobile brand, with 28.6 percent of all smartphone shipments in Q4 2015. Micromax follows in second place on 14.3 percent and Lenovo on 11.4 percent. Intex and Lava take up fourth and fifth positions, with a 9.6 and 6.8 percent share respectively. Other brands still account for a healthy 29.3 percent of the smartphone market, showing some strong diversity in the country and plenty of opportunities for smaller brands.
“The Indian smartphone demand grew strongly during the holiday season in the Q4 2015 quarter. However, the consumer demand waned since mid-November leading to smartphone shipments decline 11 percent sequentially,” – Pavel Naiya, Counterpoint Research Research Analyst
India still has a long way to go too, as currently less than 30 percent of the country’s population has hopped into the smartphone space so far. With China showing increasing signs of saturation, India will likely enjoy some increased competition from global brands as they attempt to stake out a share in one of the few remaining booming markets.
Deal: Nexus 6P and 5X, OnHub and Chromecast discounts at BestBuy
It seems like every time you turn around lately there’s another Nexus sale going on. This time Best Buy is doing a special offer on a discounted Nexus 6P – including a free gift card – as well as offering lower prices on the Nexus Player, OnHub, Chromecast and Chromecast Audio.
The gold Nexus 6P is currently $50 off ($449.99) at Best Buy and comes with a free $25 gift card as well as free shipping and six months of included cloud storage. Unfortunately, the aluminum and graphite versions are not on sale. The Nexus 5X is also $80 off ($299.99), but doesn’t have a free gift card. You will get free shipping and cloud storage though.
The Nexus Player is also on sale for $69.99 ($30 off) and it also comes with free shipping. If you’re after a smarter router instead, Google OnHub is also on sale, although only the TP-LINK version. It will set you back $179.99 ($20 off), but the Asus OnHub is still full price at $219.99.
BUY NEXUS PLAYER
BUY TP-LINK ONHUB
Meanwhile, you can also pick up a $10 gift card when you buy either the Chromecast or Chromecast Audio for $35. All of these Google product discounts are good until February 6 as part of Best Buy’s weekly ad offers.
BUY CHROMECAST
BUY CHROMECAST AUDIO
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HTC announces another $100 million in losses, improvements expected from April
2015 was a year to forget for HTC. The company struggled with a disastrous flagship, leadership changes, and hundreds of millions in losses. Released today, HTC’s Q4 2015 report does little to change the gloomy atmosphere.
HTC recorded net losses of $101 million (NT$3.4 billion) in the last quarter of 2015. A shimmer of silver lining is the revenue, which jumped 20% compared to Q3, but is still a massive 46% down compared to Q4 2014. The One A9 can be credited with this slight revival, but it’s obvious that the mid-range iPhone lookalike wasn’t enough to steer the HTC ship out of troubled waters.
While revenues increased from Q3 to Q4, HTC’s gross profit actually decreased, suggesting that HTC managed to sell more devices, but at a smaller profit margin. Operating expenses declined quarter to quarter, but still amounted to NT$7.7 billion.
HTC said it had “good momentum” with its Desire line, while the One A9 was supposedly “well received” across the world.
That said, CFO Chialin Chang suggested that any improvements in the company’s bottom line would only come in Q2 2016. In other words, expect another terrible report for Q1 2015 and don’t expect the One M10 to be available in March. We’ve previously heard that HTC is going to introduce its new flagship at a press event sometime after MWC, but the weak prediction for Q1 is confirmation that the M10 will only be released (at least in meaningful numbers) from April.
See also: HTC One M10: Everything you need to know
HTC once again touted its “innovation leadership” in virtual reality and the Internet of Things, and said it ramped up marketing expenditures for the Vive VR headset and UA Healthbox, the fitness kit it co-developed with Under Armour. Vive, in particular, could be a promising new line of business for the embattled Taiwanese company, but the potential of virtual reality as the next big consumer electronics product category is unclear.
This home-made Smart Mirror that runs Google Now is the IoT device we all want
When the world doesn’t offer you a Smart Mirror, sometimes you just have to make one yourself. At least, you do if you’re a software engineer at Google with a bit of spare time on your hands. Max Braun created this awesome DIY Smart Mirror in his spare time, and it runs Google Now.
Using a two-way mirror, display panel, some cheap components and a controller board, Braun was able to create a very polished-looking result, right up there with the best Internet of Things products made by actual manufacturers. Perhaps even better. Considering this is a do-it-yourself-in-your-spare-time project, you have to take your hat off to Mr. Braun.
There’s no shortage of home-made Smart Mirrors floating around the internet already, but this one sticks out for being so slick-looking. Working at Google probably doesn’t hurt your chances of getting things right either. To power the whole thing, Braun first used a Chromecast, then a Nexus Player and finally a Fire TV Stick to generate automatic updates for the mirror along with “OK, Google” voice commands.
See also: What is the Internet of Things?
At the moment Braun’s Smart Mirror displays pretty much what Google Now does: weather updates, news headlines (via an Associated Press RSS feed) and he is working on traffic updates, reminders and anything else you might see on a Google Now card. As he notes, until he settles on a particular platform he’ll continue to tinker.
WANT. NEED. https://t.co/gfwHCAaHod
— Hiroshi Lockheimer (@lockheimer) February 3, 2016
http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Considering Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP of Android, Chromecast and Chrome OS posted the above tweet when he saw Braun’s efforts, we might just see a Nexus Mirror at next year’s Google I/O.
What do you think of this smart mirror compared to others you’ve seen? What IoT device do you think will take off the most?
Lenovo mobile breaks even after Motorola purchase
Lenovo’s acquisition of Motorola has led to some major changes at the company, including a notable shift in how the two will be branded. The purchase also cost Lenovo a handsome sum at $2.91 billion, but the company’s mobile division is now on the cusp of making money again.
In total, Lenovo has announced a $300 million net profit for Q3 2015 and the company’s mobile division is also almost back to making a profit after some major restructuring. Lenovo stated that it would take four to six months to return the division to a profit after purchasing Motorola.
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Looking at mobile, shipments have fallen by 18.1 percent over the year resulting in total sales of 20.2 million units. This is partly due to a halt in the Chinese smartphone market, which barely grew at all last year. Lenovo has been improving its performance outside of China though, with other sales growing 15 percent year-on-year and sales in India up a huge 206 percent. Motorola has been doing well too, with a 25 percent jump in sales quarter-to-quarter.
In terms of cash, Lenovo’s Q3 revenue came in at US$3.2 billion from its mobile division, of which US$2 billion was contributed by Motorola. The company made a small pre-tax loss of US$30 million, an improvement on the $217 million loss in the previous quarter. The division managed to break even in terms of operating costs, only amortization pushed the group into a small loss.
See also: Motorola monitor: what’s going on behind the scenes?
Other aspects of Lenovo’s business are rather mixed. Its PC group continues to slump, with PC profits declining 18 percent from last year, falling to a US$405 million. Although that is still a pre-tax profit for the division and the company still leads the industry with a 21.6 percent market share. The company’s enterprise division saw an 8 percent year-on-year sales boost, but still posted a small loss of US$14 million.
With a return to profitability, all eyes will now be firmly focused on the products coming out of the combined Lenovo and Motorola smartphone division.
AIVAnet 