HTC Aims for Top 5 Share

HTC hopes to become one of the top five phone manufacturers in the world, company chief Peter Chou tells the Taiwan area Commercial Times. While not setting out a timeframe to achieve the goal, the executive believes his company will sit between third and fifth place regardless of the phone class. The target would require that HTC multiply its predicted 2008 sales of 15 million phones by more than six times to beat Motorola, which wants to sell over 100 million phones by the end of the year.

Chou's objective is complicated by HTC's emphasis on smartphones, which carry a higher price and are often excluded from developing regions where income is low and fewer customers exist that are likely to need the advanced functions of these devices. The company nonetheless raised shipping estimates for the Touch Diamond by 50 percent even before launch and has since added the Touch Pro to its lineup, both of which should improve HTC's performance in the short term.

The company faces a challenge from its immediate challenger Apple. The latter reported selling one million iPhone 3G devices in the phone's first weekend on sale and is estimated to have sold three million iPhones in one month and has set a target of selling 10 million iPhones in all of 2008. HTC so far has only anticipated selling three million Touch Diamond examples for the same year.

By Electronista Staff