HTC all smiles as Desire 816 pre-orders in China top 450,000 in first three days

HTC Corp. in Taiwan has a couple big reasons to smile today. Thanks to the three day pre-order tally for their new Desire 816 mid-range smartphone, HTC’s stock price experienced an increase like they’ve not seen in a while.

The HTCDesire 816 was announced last month. We took it for a spin at MWC and were pleasantly surprised at some of the rather high-end specs for a mid-range device, especially the 13MP rear and 5MP front cameras. Check out our hands-on here.

Pre-orders of the Desire 816 are only available in China thus far; After the third day of sales, there are reports of over 450,000 orders, with the expectation of cracking half a million very soon. Thanks in part to these sales numbers, HTCstocks experienced a quick uptick, with nearly 4% yesterday alone. In between this uptake and a healthy bump thanks to product launches at MWC, HTCis sitting at its highest stock prices since Mid-December, and experiencing its first sustained upward trend since early Q4 last year.

With less than 2 weeks remaining until the official launch of the all new HTCOne, we expect that HTCwill continue smiling at least until the end of the month. It will be interesting to see if HTC’s offerings can help turn their market share around. According to ComScore, HTChas experienced a 1.3% decrease in US subscribers since October last year. At 5.4% of the US market, HTCis in fifth place, just 1% behind Motorola, with LG, Samsung and Apple topping off the list.

The success of the well-equipped mid-range device for a reasonable price was key to Motorola’s Moto G and Moto X sales in the last 6 months. Unfortunately, as Motorola experienced financial losses, we hope that HTC’s mid-range success proves a little more lucrative without pricing it out of competition.

Are you excited about the new HTCOne or the Desire 816?