Taiwanese smartphone vendor HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday launched its new flagship smartphone in Taiwan as the company adopts new marketing strategies to regain the share of the market it has lost to rivals.
“The new HTC One is by far the best we have on offer to customers,” HTC chief executive Peter Chou (周永明) said on the sidelines of the ceremony.
First introduced last month in New York and London, the new HTC One will hit the local market by the end of this month with a price tag ranging from NT$19,900 (US$670) to NT$24,900 for different storage capacities, HTC said in a statement.
Taiwan is the first Asian nation in which HTC launched the new model, HTC’s new chief marketing officer, Benjamin Ho (何永生), said yesterday. The company plans to introduce the new smartphone to Singapore, Tokyo and Beijing next month, he added.
HTC is betting on its new smartphone model to revive its fortunes amid competition with Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co.
However, the new phone will be the company’s only flagship product launched this year, as it aims to focus on quality rather than quantity in the fiercely competitive global smartphone market, Ho said.
Under a two-year contract, users can own the phone at no cost by paying a minimum monthly subscription fee of between NT$2,199 and NT$2,540 to local telecom carriers, the company said in the statement.
Ahead of the phone launch, shares of HTC rose 4.11 percent to close at NT$266 in Taipei trading yesterday, following a plunge of 6.41 percent on Wednesday amid market worries that the company would post lower sales for last month and report losses in the current quarter because of the adverse impact of supply shortages in certain components of its phone shipments.
Last month's revenue was NT$11.4 billion, down 26.6 percent month-on-month and 44 percent lower year-on-year, HTC reported on Wednesday.
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