Business

Spillover booby-traps smartphone market

Saturated: Everyone’s got one—ahigh-end smartphone, that is—and that’s bad news for tech companies like Samsung, Apple, BlackBerry and HTC, all of which are experiencing slower sales.

Saturated: Everyone’s got one—ahigh-end smartphone, that is—and that’s bad news for tech companies like Samsung, Apple, BlackBerry and HTC, all of which are experiencing slower sales. (Getty Images/Image Source)

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This quarter’s not-hot accessory is the flop phone.

That’s right – not flip phones, but flop phones: high-end smartphones. Everyone’s already got one, making it a flop in a saturated market. That’s a problem for Samsung, BlackBerry, Apple and, with its report yesterday, HTC.

Taiwan-based HTC, which developed the HTC One — beloved by critics but shunned by consumers — was one of the hardest hit by the new smartphone market reality.

HTC’s upper ranks are in turmoil with employees abandoning the company, and yesterday it announced more disappointing quarterly results.

The tech company posted $42 million in profits in the second quarter, down 83 percent from the same period last year — well below analyst forecasts.

The HTC One has only sold about 5 million since launching earlier this year. It is a sharp full-metal phone that has plenty of luxury appeal, but failed to catch on in part because of lackluster promoting.

BlackBerry’s Z10 phone was another disappointment, with only 2.7 million shipped last quarter, and it was supposed to be the smartphone that reunited the company with its classic corporate clientele.

Analysts like Colin Gillis of BGC Partners said BlackBerry was jumping back into luxury line phones at the worst time, just as the market was turning away from high end.

Samsung’s Galaxy S4, while selling 20 million units, still fell short of its heightened expectations, putting the company in Apple territory, unable to live up to the weight of its hype.

Meanwhile, Apple’s iPhone 5 is already starting to see sales slowdowns, according to reports.