The One is helping, but not yet saving HTC

By Saul Berenbaum May 6, 2013

htc one back — Image used with permission by copyright holder

On Monday’s stock opening, HTC announced its April revenue performance, which was more of the bad news we’ve been hearing from them lately, but not quite so bad as usual..

The company’s sales totaled $19.6 billion in April 2013, or roughly $645 million, with cumulative sales for the first four months of 2013 reaching $62.4 billion. HTC’s April performance dropped 37 percent compared to the same month last year, when it reported sales totaling $31 billion.HTC is also well behind its cumulative revenue of $99 billion at the end of April 2012.

Even with all of this, HTC’s revenue was up 26 percent over March, following the HTC One’s debut last month. Still, some analysts have been worried about HTC’s recent downward trend. Some have even suggested that HTC should get itself a new CEO. But with the HTC One singing a very nice tune for the company, now’s the time to advertise, and aggressively. The HTC One has gotten a lot of really great press, and aside from a few bugs, most of the phone’s users seem to like it.

So the spotlight’s on HTC here, it seems. A strong ad campaign kicked off in the next few weeks would do a lot to raise awareness for the brand, and pick up any new customers. Buying a new smartphone can be a daunting task for people, and without a name like iPhone, or Galaxy, HTC stands in danger of being completely overtaken by the next generation of big-name product lines. They need to differentiate themselves enough from Apple and Samsung, while appealing to the same target market. And if they can’t do it quickly enough, then we’re almost sure to see a considerably lower revenue for their next April. And a gloriously over-publicized announcement within the next few months about a game-changing HTC Two wouldn’t hurt, either.

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Saul Berenbaum has been writing film and gaming reviews since college. Recently, he contributed to HardcoreDroid. Now he…

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