You better start savoring that HTC One family now because it might be the last set of premium handset HTC ever makes.
Reuters reports that the Taiwanese smartphone maker is planning to sell cheaper devices in an attempt to cut its costs by nearly a quarter and hopefully bounce back onto stable, and profitable, feet for the last financial quarter of the year.
During the an investor briefing today, HTC said its outlooks were looking grim with stock prices hitting their lowest level since 2005 and its revenue was 13 percent lower than last year.
A new deal
In a bid to recover from all this bad news, HTC Financial Chief Chialin Chang said they would look "at boarder products this quarter." The company told Reuters that it would aim to produce a higher volume of affordable smartphones.
It's a major reversal since the company decided last summer that it was going after the premium market occupied by iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones, followed by the announcement of the HTC One this February.
Much of this move is in reaction to its second-quarter results, which revealed 60 percent of phones shipped to China costed $150 or less. While this might sound like news that's only important to China, a shift in manufacturing could affect the global supply of HTC Phones.
As the Taiwanese company focuses on making budget handsets, we could see shortages of HTC One Mini and HTC One and HTC One Maxx phones during the holiday season. Even without the shadow of Black November looming over technophile heads, the HTC One has seen its own string of supply issues already.
As for the future, this could also lead to familiar lack of the HTC One Two smartphones. Of course nothing is certain yet, but we'll post any new developments as they happen.
Via Reuters
Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/htc-comes-crawling-back-to-budget-phones-for-the-rest-of-the-year-1196838
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