HTC reportedly developing mobile OS for Chinese market

HTC has seen better times, the company once held 40% of Android’s global market, but in the past three years they have had this stripped away by the dominant South Korean neighbour Samsung.

This has hit HTC hard, with little revenue outside the mobile market, sales of devices is everything for the company. Unlike Samsung, who sells mobile components and competes in different electronic areas, HTC is solely based on mobile.

With the American market still stuck with Samsung and Apple, with Motorola grabbing a little bite of the pie, it seems HTC is going to turn their full attention on China, the biggest mobile consumer in the world.

According to a new report by the WSJ, HTC will build a mobile OS for Chinese consumers only, integrating some of the biggest social networks onto the operating system to make it more appealing to Chinese buyers.

Even though most HTC workers speak Chinese, the company is relatively new to the mobile market in China, after dropping the Dopod brand name in 2010. The company has not had great success in China, but believes it may be about to change with the new OS.

This may be a good move to solidify ties with the Chinese government and partners within China, like Weibo and Baidu, but the move may be in vein if HTC cannot find traction from China, as many other operating systems have failed to grab.

Samsung had Bada OS, Nokia has had Symbian OS and now Asha OS, Acer developed a knock-off Android OS and there are others lurking in China, but still Android and iOS remain the top competitors in the country, with a small sprinkle of Windows Phone 8.

The HTC One was set to be the Taiwanese companies push back into the mobile industry, but quarterly revenues have been less than impressive, with Q3 set to hit a loss, one of the first in the past few years. HTC’s stock is dropping frantically and there is talk of a possible sale.