A Chinese industry supply chain claims that HTC is looking to reduce the prices on its upcoming lineup of Android and Windows Phone 8 powered devices. Most recently, HTC has struggled to keep up with Samsung and Apple losing market share each and every day. In an effort to compete more directly with it’s rivals the company is rumored to be reducing the price point of it’s handsets. This pricing strategy will impact both upcoming devices as well as those already present in the market (HTC One X/S, etc). HTC believes this may give them the competitive edge to recapture market share and increase revenue.

It’s not exactly clear if HTC will be altering anything on the hardware side to keep costs down (hopefully their build quality continues to be top notch), but the source claims that HTC will be dropping Beats Audio technology from the mix. While HTC still does maintain a 25% share of Beats Audio, after selling half of it’s original shares only a month ago, HTC does still hold exclusive rights to use the tech in mobile devices. Most likely HTC is paying a small licensing fee for every device with Beats enabled so by reducing this feature they hope to reduce overhead cost for each device.

The issue is whether or not this is too little too late. A more competitive HTC is something the industry would like to see, keeping pressure on Apple and Samsung to continue innovation and keep costs down. What consumers do not want to see however, are HTC devices that skimp on build quality and internal components for the sake of being less expensive than the competition.

Price drops for the existing HTC phones as well as prices for new devices are unknown, but DroidDog will continue to monitor and keep you up to date on the newest announcements surrounding HTC pricing strategies.

MyDrivers via Unwired View