From DailyTech: HTC has seen its fair share of losses in its recent past, but the smartphone maker has a plan to turn things around in 2014.
According to a new report from Reuters, HTC will sell more mid-tier and affordable smartphones as a way of filling in the gaps in its offerings.
Apple and Samsung dominate the high-end smartphone market (which HTC said it abandoned in November 2013) while Chinese competitors like Xiaomi have taken over the low-end. So HTC has decided to focus on the mid-tier range, offering products that cost around $150-$300.
HTC said it won't get into the "very, very low-end market," but will release a new flagship this year.
Aside from jumping into the mid-tier, HTC also said it needs more aggressive marketing this year than it did in the last.
In 2013, HTC hired actor Robert Downey Jr for some of its TV ads, where it promoted its "Here's to Change" campaign. But HTC feels it needs to do more in order to reach beyond "tech-savvy 20 to 30-year-olds."
HTC is trying to fix its growth problem in China as well, where the highest-growth price bracket is under $150. But HTC only has two phones out of its 53 available that fit into this category. Twenty-one are over $500, while the rest fall somewhere in between.
HTC is hoping for a recovery after seeing its global market share fall to just 2 percent in 2013. It also reported its second straight quarter of operating losses last month.
But analysts have said that HTC's problems aren't really price or marketing, but rather underwhelming products that don't bring anything new to the market.
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