HTC Sets Ambitious Goal for Mainland China Operation

Taipei, June 27, 2011 (CENS)--HTC Corp., currently Taiwan's No.1 brand-name supplier of smartphones, will increase the number of its shops-in-shop to 2,000 in mainland China by the end of this year, up from current 630, the company's senior executive vice president, Fred Liu, vowed recently.

Liu unveiled the ambitious goal as the mainland's telecom market is more than 10 times Taiwan's, inspiring the world's top smartphone makers, including HTC, to hinge their next victories in the mainland market.

Liu said his company has been making aggressive break into the mainland market with its R&D strength, broad product line, and new retail approach. The company has organized an R&D team in the mainland to work on time-division (TD) mobile technologies. This year, the company will quadruple the R&D staff.

Using its advantage of broad product line, the company has introduced the attractive HTC Incredible phones in the mainland in cooperation with China Telecom and will roll out TD-SCDMA and WCDMA versions of HTC Sensation phones in partnership with China Mobile and China Unicom.

Shop-in-shop is the company's retail strategy for the mainland market. Liu noted that his company had been working with the mainland's telecom companies and retailers to promote the shops.

Liu claimed that the company sells a smaprtphone every 0.68 second worldwide and one out of five Android-based smartphones as well as one out of two Windows Mobile-activated smartphones are supplied by HTC.

Industry executives noted that the mainland market is very crucial to HTC's plan to boost its share of the Asia Pacific market.

The Chinese mainland market has also drawn Apple to shoot for shares there. Apple plans to increase stores in the mainland to 25 by 2012 from current five. Industry watchers estimated mainland China will contribute as much as a half of Apple's revenue in 2015.