HTC Desire 601, HTC Desire 300 land without new features

September 4, 2013

To shore up smartphone market share, HTC unveiled HTC Desire 601 and HTC Desire 300. Both do not have any new features as compared with HTC One, its flagship phone.

Bringing products at different price points is the focus area for HTC. HTC Desire 601 and HTC Desire 300 do not have any new features compared with HTC One.

The struggling smartphone maker said the two phones are affordable and come with superior quality. ( Does HTC One smartphone disappoint? )

The Taiwanese phone maker will launch HTC Desire 601, a mid-range phone 4.5-inch display screen, in select markets across EMEA from October 2013. It is mainly targeted at 4G markets.

The 4.3-inch HTC Desire 300, an entry-level smartphone, will be launched in select markets from October 2013.

The company is yet to announce price of HTC Desire 601 and HTC Desire 300.

Recently, ABI Research has ranked HTC at 9th position in smartphone market share ranking for second quarter of 2013. HTC has 3.1 percent market share.

Smartphone market leader Samsung has 34.82 percent share. ( Top 10 smartphone market share list for Q2 )

HTC posted quarterly revenue of NT$70.7 billion, with gross margin of 23.2 percent and operating margin of 1.5 percent.

As part of its new strategies, HTC announced key appointments, including Jack Yang to president of South Asia, Sirpa Ikola to senior director of marketing for South Asia, and Lorain Wong to vice president of global PR.

HTC Desire 601 and HTC Desire 300 is part of enhancing its reach across global markets. It does not want to follow BlackBerry which is looking for a buyer. Also, HTC learnt lessons from Nokia which has sold its phone biz to Microsoft for $7.2 billion.