HTC on Friday said its profit jumped 160 percent in the fall as part of record business it expected to accelerate this year. Its decision to focus on Android for almost all of 2010 saw it reach a net profit of $501.2 million. A push on North America was evident as more than half of the $9.55 billion in revenue it made in all of 2010, 50.6 percent, came from North America; it shipped 24.6 million phones worldwide last year.
The company also expected that growth to pick up in 2011 and forecast that it would ship 8.5 million phones in the first quarter of this year. HTC would double production at its main Shanghai factory to two million phones every month to keep up with demand, CEO Peter Chou said. It was counting on phones using HSPA+ or LTE to drive these sales and singled out both the Inspire 4G at AT&T and Thunderbolt at Verizon as its growth devices so far.
