Taiwanese
smartphone major HTC has reported a 25 percent decrease in net profit in
October-December 2011 at T$11.02 billion ($364.26 million), compared with
T$14.80 billion a year earlier and T$18.68 billion in the previous quarter.

This,
according to analysts, is worse-than-expected yearly profit decline in the
fourth quarter, and the first decline in two years, as its models scrambled to
compete with Apple Inc’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy range.

Consolidated
sales for December were T$26.36 billion, down 20.3 per cent from the same month
a year earlier.

Net profit
for the full year of 2011 was however up 57 per cent from 2010 to T$62.05
billion.

The
company has said it will unveil new models in February that will be better and
more competitive, and will include new phones for the high speed LTE standard
in the US market.

Squeezed
of late between Apple’s huge offering of apps for the iPhone and Samsung’s
marketing budget that gives its Galaxy models extra clout, HTC’s Desire,
Sensation and Wildfire models have struggled to maintain the momentum.

On the
other hand, Samsung Electronics, the world’s top maker of memory chips and
smartphones, said its October-December profit would jump 73 percent to a
life-time high, aided by one-off gains and record-smashing sales of
smartphones.

The South
Korean firm has surged past Apple as the world’s top smartphone maker in the
third quarter.

In 2012,
its smartphone sales are expected to rise to as high as 170 million units,
according to BNP Paribas and Korea Investment & Securities, the most
bullish street view, from an estimated 95 million last year, powered by a
diverse product portfolio that spans high-end Galaxy models to cheap phones
using Samsung’s own “bada” software.