Marketing Budget as HTC Losing Factor in Smartphone War

According to CNET, HTC's marketing budget compared with that of Samsung's war chest has shown significant gap between the two.

HTC thought of making quality smartphones but still came back without a response for their products to get noticed. Also, the Taiwanese phonemaker is losing its budget.

Samsung has spent $363 million on marketing alone in the U.S. and $128 million coming in the fourth quarter in the previous year. Apple was not stooping with its expenditure of $350.9 million during the past year and $100 million more during the big holiday seasons.

HTC spent only $75.8 million for the entire season. It has been reported HTC's fourth quarter push was only amounted to $1.5 million. With this big gap, it could easily be concluded the reason HTC One was completely surpassed by competitors.

Apprently, history repeats itself with HTC for HTC One M8, which they launched on March 25. M8 has fine but with superior innovations compared to the original HTC One. The only thing was that it also experienced hardships in launching with that of Samsung Electronics' Galaxy S5 and likely to have a marketing attack.

How does HTC deal with it? Analyst Maribel Lopez of Lopez Research said HTC need to raise their marketplace awareness as they are nowhere to be found in certain markets.

Chairman Cher Wang now manages both the marketing and business affairs of the company. The result of her management and stewardship would bring us an impact by the end of the year.

The dilemma HTC is experiencing now should not be on a permanent status as it has nearly gained a stable name way back years ago when it was more aware and conscious in producing premium-quality in the smartphone industry.

Historically, HTC was the first company to manufacture an Android smartphone by collaborating with Google to come up with G1. It was the first to have a 4G WiMax smartphone with Sprint Evo4G and the first to have a Verizon LTE smartphone with the Thunderbolt.

HTC never succeeded in achieving that household name status because its brand is slowly fading as some of its smartphones began to fail and extends to too many of their products, at times working to create too many subpar exclusives with its partners.

There was the ill-received status or cha-cha. The first Facebook phone and the HTC Rhyme which is a Verizon-bound smartphone exclusively designed for women.

Samsung has the big say-money and resources to do a huge promotion while HTC always took strength of its products but never would they achieve such kind of solid patronage as what did Apple is experiencing.

Maybe it's too late for HTC but they are back to produce superior products. Their brand has faded fast and may cost them much more effort and investment to gain back their status.