HTC slumps to record low as M7 and Sense 5.0 leak

HTC has slumped to its lowest profit in all its time making Android smart phones -- could the impending M7 turn things around?

As rumours swirl about the forthcoming M7 -- and new Sense 5.0 software that comes with it -- HTC is hitting new lows. Having made £21.5m profit in the past three months, the results for the final quarter of 2012 are HTC's worst numbers since 2004.

It's better than a loss, but that's a very slim profit from a total revenue of over a billion quid, and it continues HTC's downward trend. Samsung has muscled HTC off the top spot as leading Android manufacturer, while the rival iPhone shows no signs of slowing.

All of this puts extra pressure on HTC's forthcoming phones, including the M7. New leaks suggest the M7 will have a black shell and bevelled edge, encasing its 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and 13-megapixel camera. It's also rumoured to include 4G and 802.11ac, the next generation of Wi-Fi.

The new phones are expected to run Sense 5.0, the next version of HTC's interface that sits on top of the phone's Android software. At launch the new phone is expected to be running Android 4.2, with Sense 5.0 paring down the extras to give you a cleaner Android experience.

If leaked screenshots are to be believed, Sense 5.0 gets rid of the ring on the lock screen, where the phone now displays the time and icons revealing the current weather.

Is HTC dead in the water? What does it need to pull from up its sleeve this year to challenge the iPhones and Galaxys of this world? Tell me your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page.