HTC to invade Samsung's China territory with HTC One

TAIWAN: AVANTI, a research division of TrendForce, recently conducted a market survey aimed at measuring the Chinese consumers’ enthusiasm for and willingness to purchase the new HTC One.

The survey found that not only are many people highly interested in following the new HTC handset’s related news and development, they are also thinking about eventually owning the device.

As had been the case with the research previously conducted on Samsung’s Galaxy S IV, the present market research revealed the HTC One to be a highly attractive option among the people surveyed, with over 60 percent of the existing HTC users thinking of buying the new handset (this proportion, interestingly, exceeds that of the Samsung users contemplating on buying the Galaxy S IV in the previous survey). The level of enthusiasm for the new HTC flagship device, on the whole, turned out to be a lot higher than anticipated.

Young consumers drawn to HTC smartphones
According to the data compiled by Avanti, HTC is the fourth most used smartphone brand among the surveyed Chinese consumers--ranking behind Samsung, Nokia, and Apple--and is generally favored by users that are aged 24 or under.

Of all the participants surveyed, 52.2 percent revealed that they had been aware of the launch of HTC’s newest handset. 39.7 percent, on the other hand, admitted to being highly interested in keeping track of the news and development of the HTC One.

Processor, camera and display quality most favored smartphone features
With regard to the various smartphone specs, the surveyed consumers tended to show the highest degree of preferences for smartphone features such as camera type, display resolution, and processor power. The three features were highly regarded regardless of the surveyed consumers' gender.

HTC One on par with Galaxy S IV
In the “willingness to purchase” category, the proportion of consumers wanting to own the new HTC device turned out to be greater than 40 percent, which is similar to the proportion of consumers that admitted to wanting a Galaxy S IV in AVANTI’s previous market survey.

The similarity is in many ways largely indicative of the enthusiasm that the Chinese consumers have towards the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S IV. It also, more importantly, goes on to show the kind of intense competition that can be expected between the two major smartphone devices.

In the survey, the existing Samsung users wanting to switch to the HTC One outnumber the iPhone users who are thinking of doing the same thing. A possible reason for this is that both HTC and Samsung devices are powered by Android, which makes the transitional process relatively easy for consumers.

The percentage of HTC users hoping to purchase the HTC One is approximately 64.5 percent, higher than the percentage of Samsung users from the previous AVANTI survey that wanted to switch to the Galaxy S IV (58.4 percent). It would appear that many of the Chinese consumers are continuing to put a lot of faith in HTC’s newest device.

Although the HTC One lost to the Galaxy S IV in terms of “consumer interest level,” in the “intent to purchase” category the former device performed relatively well. The HTC One, all in all, could be said to be the right device to put the Taiwanese company back on track.