HTC once saw six consecutive months of record revenue in 2011 before the release of the iPhone 4S. Since that time, profits have been declining because of competition with both Apple and Samsung.

Samsung shipped 69.4 million smartphones during the first quarter of 2013, dominating the Android market and good enough for a 33.1 percent share of the global smartphone market. LG was the next-closest Android vendor in Q1 and controlled less than 5 percent of the market worldwide.

Marketing is a huge reason for this discrepancy and is overwhelming its competition with its sales and marketing budget. Samsung spent an estimated $9.3 billion on marketing in 2012 and is believed to of dropped $2.5 billion on sales and marketing in Q1 2013 alone.

Compared to this, HTC spent $130 million last quarter on sales and marketing activities. To put that in perspective, Samsung spent nearly 20 times more than HTC did on marketing, advertising and related activities last quarter.

While HTC recently launched the One and the company hopes that will help turn around its fortunes. However, the launch of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 will probably involve billions spent on marketing, which may overwhelm anything HTC is likely to do.

Source: BGR.com