Very recently, we’ve been hearing some fairly bad news coming from HTC, they’re losing staff, such as Asia Chief, Lennard Hoornik, which is an important market for HTC and while they’re still making a profit, HTC are still nowhere as strong as they have been in the past. Their Q1 figures for 2013 were the worst in the company’s history and it looks like the One might not be enough to hold out against Samsung. Things aren’t that bad however, as the WSJ are reporting that approximately 5 Million units of the HTC One have been sold since its launch.
The 5 Million figure was passed to the publication by an anonymous exec at the company and he’s quoted directly as stating the following:
“Orders are pretty good so far and are still more than what we can supply. This is partly due to the shortage of components. When the issue is resolved next month, we will have a better idea if it’s doing really well or not,”
If that figure is to be believed, that it would make the One a fairly big seller, of course that’s just half the 10 Million figure that Samsung has just reached with their Galaxy S 4. The success that Samsung is enjoying right now is incredible, and if I were sat behind a desk at HTC, I’d be happy doing just half as good as Samsung are doing. It’s encouraging to see that demand for the handset is still strong, especially after last year when interest in the One S and the One X seemed to die down very shortly after launch.
The One is a great device – we reviewed it here – and there’s no denying that it can keep up with the Galaxy S 4 but, HTC were asleep throughout 2012 when the South Korean giant spun up their impressive marketing machine that would end up selling 50 Million Galaxy S IIIs. If anything, it’s great to see that the One has actually sold well at all, even if 5 Million is a figure dwarfed by Samsung. I’m hoping that HTC can pull things around, and that in a year or so we can all talk about HTC like we used to do.
[Source: WSJ]