HTC recently reported its first ever loss of $101.3m (£62m) in the three months to September since going public more than a decade ago. Sales for the quarter fell by a third, hit by fierce competition in the smartphone market, supply chain constraints and internal turmoil.
The Taiwanese manufacturer, which has long been one of the market leaders in Android smartphones, also saw its share of smartphone shipments dwindle to 6 million handsets during the quarter, according to estimates by Francisco Jeronimo of the research company IDC. That gives it a market share of around 2.3% in a world market of 260m smartphones.
Is there any hope for HTC? Or will it follow in the footsteps of Motorolo, Sony-Ericsson, Nokia and BlackBerry?
In an interview with Bloomberg earlier this week, HTC’s chairwoman, Cher Wang, said that the company’s next quarter would be its "biggest challenge" as it is failing to communicate its strengths to customers.
Another study by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners found that a fifth of Android users are swapping their devices in favour of Apple’s phone.
Despite all this, the HTC One smartphone has been hailed by several review sites as the best Android device on the market, recently picking up three awards at the T3 gadget Awards.
New devices, such as the new all-gold edition of their HTC One handset and upcoming launch of HTC One Max, and $1bn marketing campaign starring Iron Man actor Robert Downy Jr shows that the company is certainly trying to stay alive.
But is this enough to regain its share of the market?
