HTC's mobile unit might be in dire straits, but it's not giving up yet

TL;DR

• HTC has re-affirmed its commitment to the smartphone market.
• The company also said it will release more smartphones during the end of 2018 and in early 2019.
• Unfortunately for HTC, the company has been in dire straits for years.

With HTC’s smartphone business seeing a steady decline over the years, it would not come as a surprise if the company eventually calls it quits. Instead, an HTC spokesperson told DigiTimes that the company will not exit the mobile business.

The spokesperson told the outlet that HTC will “continue strengthening its smartphone business with new models to be released at year-end 2018 and in early 2019.” The representative added that these new devices would be consumer and enterprise models. HTC’s most recent smartphone announcement was the Exodus 1, a blockchain smartphone that includes cryptocurrency-focused features.

To that end, the HTC spokesperson also said the company plans to announce a version of the U12 Life with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The global version of the U12 Life was previously announced with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.

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The HTC spokesperson also said its virtual reality technology will play a role in the company’s development of mobile devices. Furthermore, the representative said HTC will “exert efforts to integrate related technologies including AI, blockchain, and 5G to roll out new product lines for the 5G era.”

Unfortunately, the statements will likely do little to assuage any concerns over HTC’s future. For Q2 2018, HTC posted its lowest revenues since 2003 — before Google acquired Android. The only good news for that quarter was that profits were still up, but that largely boiled down to capital gains and Google’s acquisition of a large chunk of HTC’s engineering staff.

As much as I hate to say it, it might be time for HTC to re-evaluate where it stands in the mobile industry. Some of my favorite smartphones from years ago were from HTC, but I would be lying if I said the company has not gone down the wayside in recent years.

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