HTC Unveils Mid-range Desire 12s

Taiwan-based smartphone brand HTC Corp. unveiled Monday its latest mid-range model the 'Desire 12s' as part of its low cost Desire 12 series.

Taipei, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Dec, 2018 ) :Taiwan-based smartphone brand HTC Corp. unveiled Monday its latest mid-range model the 'Desire 12s' as part of its low cost Desire 12 series.

The new Desire 12s, available in black, gray and red, is scheduled to go on sale in early January, Darren Chen, head of HTC Taiwan, said at a news conference.

Chen said the Desire 12s will have a price tag of NT$5,990 (US$194) for a version with 32GB of storage and 3GB of RAM and NT$6,990 for a version with 64GB of storage and 4GB of RAM.

The new model is powered by Qualcomm's octa-core Snapdragon 435 processor and has a 5.7-inch HD screen, a fingerprint identification function and a camera featuring 13 megapixel sensors for both the front and back of the phone.

HTC is facing stiff competition from Chinese brands, in particular at the lower end of the market, Chen said, but he believed the pricing of the Desire 12s will be very competitive and that shipments of the new model will top those of its predecessors in the Desire 12 series.

After the launch of the Desire 12s, Chen said, HTC will unveil additional new mid-range and high-end models in the first half of next year priced from NT$5,000 to NT$20,000 to compete in the global market.

As for the high-end models, Chen said the upcoming phones will be an extension of the latest U12 Plus.

Commenting meanwhile on the company's efforts to penetrate the VR market, Chen said sales generated in the Taiwan market doubled from a year earlier in 2018, and he expected that growth momentum to continue.

To diversify its business from the fiercely competitive smartphone market, HTC delved into the VR sector by unveiling its first VR headset, the HTC Vive, in 2015, and put it on the market globally in April 2016.

HTC has since introduced follow-up models, such as the Vive Pro, an upgraded version of the Vive and the wireless Vive Focus.

Chen said many enterprises in Taiwan have expressed strong interest in the Vive Focus, and he expected HTC to launch new VR products next year.

Yet despite its efforts to enter the VR field, VR still accounts for only a small fraction of HTC's revenue and has failed to boost the company's bottom line.

HTC posted a loss per share of NT$3.18 in the third quarter, worse than the NT$2.53 in loss per share seen a quarter earlier.

While HTC continued to suffer a net loss in the third quarter, it posted NT$20.01 in earnings per share for the first nine months of the year because of the big one-time profit it made in the first quarter on a US$1 billion sale of its smartphone ODM assets to Google.