14 DAY TRIAL // Taiwanese mobile phone maker HTC Corporation is expected to lose significant ground on the smartphone market in the coming year, due to a significant drop in sales.
Apparently, the company has had a hard time making a name for itself in the mid-range market, especially in markets such as China, and this will negatively impact its overall performance.
A recent article on Focustaiwan cites a Morgan Stanley report forecasting that HTC will ship only 3.5 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of this year, which will mark a 4 percent drop compared to the previous quarter.
Furthermore, the handset vendor is expected to see its smartphone shipments go down by as much as 33 percent in 2014, amounting to a total of only 14.5 million units.
Earlier this week, HTC made official new mid-range devices in its homeland market, including the HTC Desire 700 and Desire 501, yet they might not help it that much either.
Along with the unveiling of these smartphones, the company announced that it had partnered with more chip makers out there for the inclusion of their processors inside its smartphones.
The Desire 501, for example, was announced with an ST-Ericsson U8520 CPU inside, while the Desire 700 comes with a Spreadtrum Shark quad-core processor. A third new device from the company, namely Desire 601, was unveiled with a Broadcom Java quad-core chip.
Jack Tong, head of China and North Asia President at HTC, has already confirmed that the handset vendor will make the switch to new chipsepts in its high-end smartphones as well.
HTC will be looking into new means to provide users with the performance levels they are expecting from its devices, but will also be looking at reducing the cost of smartphones, that’s for sure. It remains to be seen whether the strategy will indeed pay off or not.