When news broke that HTC was pulling out of Brazil and South Korea, many thought that the company was on the retreat. But things are completely different in China. With new handsets like the HTC X720d and HTC Wind designed specifically for China, HTC has managed to grow its market share from 2.6% in Q1 to 6% in Q2 – a 130% increase. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg for HTC. With a new marketing campaign, partnerships with China’s largest social media companies and a significant increase in retail presence, HTC expects to gain another 3% to 4% of China’s smartphone market share in each of the following two quarters with the goal on being the number two smartphone revenue by 2015.
China’s smartphone market currently sustains between 150 million-170 million sales per year, but analysts expect that number to balloon to 300 million by 2015. The smartphone leader in China for the first quarter of 2012 was Samsung with 24.9% market share with Huawei in second place with 12.2%.
While HTC’s focus on the Chinese market may seem distant and irrelevant for those of us who live in Europe and North America, it will be a crucial growth opportunity which should help HTC regain its position as a leader in the global smartphone sector.
[quote]I do believe HTC has all the elements for success…but we need to be cautious and we need to make every step right, if we make one wrong step, then it will take us a much longer time to recover.[/quote]Source: WSJ
