It seems that as much as HTC is trying these days, the company just doesn’t seem to have much luck in moving its handsets, at least not compared to the competition like Apple, Samsung, and LG, or in more recent times Huawei who has actually overtaken Apple as the second largest smartphone company.
So much so that in a report from Chinese publication Commercial Times (via PhoneArena), HTC could be considering selling off their smartphone business, and apparently Google is the one said to be considering it. The report claims that Google is considering two options: one of which is becoming a strategic partner with HTC, and the other is to buy HTC’s smartphone business outright, in which by doing so we guess it gives Google access to making its own smartphones and not having to rely on outside OEMs in the future.
Given that HTC and Google have worked together before on Nexus smartphones, tablets, and last year’s Pixel handsets (this year’s Pixel phones are also rumored to be made by HTC), we guess it doesn’t sound like a stretch of the imagination. However HTC’s financials don’t appear to be too great.
A report from DigiTimes has revealed that HTC’s latest financials report consolidated revenues of NT$3 billion for August, which is the company’s lowest monthly figures in 13 years, and also represents a 51.5% decline from the previous month, and 54.4% from the previous year. In any case you should definitely take this with a grain of salt for now, at least until HTC or Google make an official statement confirming/denying the report.