RW Baird & Co.’s William Power this morning cut his rating on the ordinary shares of phone maker�HTC (2498TW) traded on the Taipei exchange to Neutral from Buy, arguing that Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone will likely take share from HTC at Sprint-Nextel (S).
HTC makes phones based on Google’s (GOOG) “Android” operating system, as well as phones based on Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone. HTC’s creations have been popular at Sprint under the “Evo” brand. Apple’s iPhone goes on sale today at Sprint for the first time.
Not helping matters, HTC appears poised to lose its special advantage at Sprint, Power thinks. HTC has had a great deal of success selling phones running on Sprint’s “Wimax” 4G network, writes Power. However, Sprint management said during a meeting with analysts last Friday that it plans to invest in building an “LTE” network for 4G, and placing less emphasis on Wimax, for which it currently must rely on partner Clearwire (CLWR) to provide.
“Sprint’s plans to cease selling WiMAX devices by the end of 2012 impacts HTC more than most due to its highly successful Evo WiMAX devices,” writes Power.
“We expect HTC to remain a key LTE vendor, though competition will be more intense.”
Power notes that the company’s Q3 report on October 6th included no pickup in revenue in September, not a good sign.
For this year, Power cut his revenue estimate to $511.72 billion in New Taiwan dollars from $522.37 billion, and cut his 2012 estimate to $637.5 billion from a prior $694.6 billion.
HTC shares are down 2.5% today to $736 in New Taiwan dollars.
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