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Cheap as chips
Things are looking up for HTC. The troubled smartphone maker has just announced its first sales growth in three years.
Sales in the fourth quarter of 2014 hit NT$47.9 billion (£990 million), which is up from NT$42.9 billion in the same period a year before. That's its first gain since the third quarter of 2011, Bloomberg reports.
Its sales boost is mostly down to its mid-range models, as opposed to flagships like the HTC One (M8). HTC also made the Nexus 9, the new Google tablet. The Nexus 9 was the company's first tablet since the 7-inch HTC Flyer in 2011.
Increasingly, companies are looking to the mid-range. Chinese firm Xiaomi managed to triple its sales during 2014, thanks to a winning combination of mid-range devices at rock-bottom prices. Samsung has also confirmed it will focus more on mid-range devices going forward.
Read more: HTC Desire 320 unveiled as budget blower at CES 2015
Yesterday, HTC unveiled the Desire 320, a budget smartphone that replaces last year's Desire 310. It rocks a quad-core 1.3GHz processor, 5-megapixel camera, and a 4.5-inch screen. Android KitKat is the order of the day, rather than Lollipop, and it has HTC's Sense UI slathered over the top. This brings such features as BlinkFeed and Video Highlights.
The HTC One (M8) garnered rave reviews, being second only to the iPhone 6 in the design stakes. But it looks like the immediate future for HTC – as with many other companies – lies in the mid-range.
