Despite being based in Taiwan, HTC hasn't found much success in mainland China of late — it's currently the ninth-placed smartphone manufacturer. The company is looking to change this, though, with an expansion of Chinese operations that it hopes will place it within the top two companies based on revenue by 2015. China head Ray Yam told the Wall Street Journal that HTC will boost its image by bolstering the number of branded sales counters across the country from 2,700 to 3,500 by the end of next year, and there are also plans to expand the local engineering team.
Yam says that the aim is for HTC to be a high-end brand that can move devices at the same price as the iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy series, but even with excellent devices such as the One X the company has its work cut out in China. Samsung has a 25-percent share of the market and around 6,000 branded counters, ZTE and Huawei are mounting strong homegrown competition, and we may see a TD-LTE-compatible iPhone that could work on the world's largest carrier, China Mobile.