A couple days ago HTC raced past Nokia to become the world’s third-largest phone maker by market value. Today, the smartphone company revealed that sales in the first quarter (three months) of 2011 were double that of a year ago, helping HTC beat estimates for revenue and profit, two things that have investors jumping for joy. Bloomberg notes that strong demand for its Android devices, especially the ThunderBolt 4G, propelled sales.
HTC beat profit estimates, posting NT$14.8 billion ($513 million) in profit, about three times its profit last year. It shipped an estimated 8.5-9.0 million handsets for the quarter. Revenue hit NT104.2 billion, beating HTC’s January forecast of NT$94 billion and analyst’s estimates of NT$95 billion.
While hard sales numbers haven’t been released, BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk surveyed 150 Verizon Wireless stores in late March and found that the ThunderBolt had outsold the iPhone in 28 percent of stores and equaled iPhone sales in 61 percent of them.
“Several respondents indicated that the store lines were longer for the first day of the ThunderBolt launch than they were for the iPhone,” Piecyk wrote. “Verizon sales people indicated that sales of the iPhone were still strong but they simply noted that the ThunderBolt was as strong if not stronger.”
Do you own a ThunderBolt phone on Verizon? If so, how is your service and battery life? Was it hard to find the handset?
