HTC has obviously lost its direction in the market. HTC reported its first loss in the third quarter after 2002 recently while Samsung announced its record-level profits 9.3 billion dollars at the same time.

HTC posted a net loss of 2.97 billion Taiwan dollars, or about $101 million, in the third quarter, after net income of 3.9 billion Taiwan dollars a year earlier. The company’s sales plunged to 47.1 billion Taiwan dollars in the third quarter from 70.2 billion dollars a year earlier.

Facing the pressure from Samsung and Apple on premium models, HTC also suffered from other competitors such as  Lenovo, ZTE and Huawei from China on the low end of the phone market.

Cher Wang, HTC’s chairwoman, said in a recent interview that the fourth quarter will be a difficult time for HTC and the “biggest challenge” will come to HTC.

Will HTC have its recovery in smart phone market or follow the ways of Nokia and Motorola, becoming acquired companies of Microsoft and Google? Let’s see.