After posting disappointing results at the conclusion of last year and forecasting another difficult quarter ahead, HTC has given some insight into how it plans to get back on track. The company has announced a new cross-disciplinary department named Studio, which will consist of designers and engineers that will report directly to HTC's CEO Peter Chou. Studio will be focused on "key products" for launch this year, and will have a more "open mind on components" than HTC has had in the past. CFO Winston Yung believes that looking further afield for its components will help the company to "regain the edge in products."
"[We] want to make sure that we do have multiple sources for a single component. So we have, I think, a very good range of suppliers to choose from on CPU, for example."
The above quote is particularly notable, as HTC has worked almost exclusively with Qualcomm over the past five years. Previously, the company had used chips from several manufacturers including Samsung and TI, both prominent names in the SoC field. Nvidia has also become a major player with its Tegra chipsets, so HTC should be spoilt for choice. The Taiwanese company is expected to announce a number of new devices at MWC later this month, so we'll bring you a closer look at what this year's lineup will look like soon.