HTC is expected to reach 1 000 000 sales mark for HTC Diamond handsets by the end of this summer! This figure seems to be incredibly high taking into account that High Tech Computer (HTC) began to ship the handsets at the end of May, less than 3 months ago. HTC CEO Peter Chou met journalists on August 4 and reported about company’s achievements.It took about five months for HTC to ship up to one million units of its first touch-screen handset, the HTC Touch, noted market sources. Peter Chou told that HTC is definitely able to reach its next goal - shipping two million HTC Diamond handsets by the end of this year.
However, sources at the Taiwan handset industry supposed that HTC will eventually revise upward its shipping target for 2008. According to them, there’s a good reason to believe that HTC is likely to ship 2.5-3 million HTC Diamond handsets before the end of the year.
Despite market concerns of declining gross margins at HTC, Peter Chou said that HTC is expected to report gross margins of 34-35% in the third quarter of 2008. As he contended, it will be still relatively higher compared to the market average.
Other news came from Jack Tong, the vice president of HTC Asia. HTC's new plant in Shanghai is expected to begin volume production in October this year with a capacity of 1000000 handsets per month. According to Tong, the Shanghai plant will mainly focus on the production of 2.5G handsets.
