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HTC hopes to revive its fortunes through cheaper phones

Meanwhile, HTC has hinted its amenable to exploring the wearable-tech business. 

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Reuters
What's next for HTC?
  • By Matthew Shaer Correspondent

Last year, HTC took the wraps off the One, an aluminum-bodied smart phone running Google's Android OS. Critics, for the most part, were very kind: Engadget called it "among the finest phones available" and David Pierce of The Verge dubbed it "beautiful."

Sales, on the other hand, were lackluster, and the One ultimately failed to keep pace with the iPhone 5S and the Samsung Galaxy S4. 

Now HTC says will adjust course in an effort to revive its fortunes. The strategy: increase the variety of its smart phone offerings. "The problem with us last year was we only concentrated on our flagship. We missed a huge chunk of the mid-tier market," HTC co-founder and chairwoman Cher Wang told Reuters in an interview last week.

So will a few budget devices be enough to put HTC – once the top smart phone vendor in the US – back in the running? There's certainly evidence to think it could. Demand for the mid-level handsets such as the Moto G has reportedly been very high. 

But over at GigaOM, Alex Colon has his doubts. 

"[W]hile it’s true that the company shouldn’t hope to turn things around solely on the potential success of a follow-up to the HTC One, it also needs to realize that profit margins are likely to shrink along with the cost of these budget handsets," Mr. Colon writes. "HTC will need to sell a lot of lower-priced phones to help reverse the course of its earnings trajectory, and there is more competition in the mid-range space than ever." 

In related news, HTC's Peter Chou recently hinted that the company might be amenable to moving into the wearable-tech business. But he stressed that the company would not announce anything yet. 

"It has to meet a need, otherwise it's just a gimmick or concept, it's not for people's day-to-day lives," he told the Financial Times. 

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