[One (M7) General] BarryH_GEG:
Samsung could give two craps about HTC. HTC expects to sell 20MM One's this year. Samsung expects to sell 350MM mobile devices in 2013. From another thread...

Here are my guesses at things that have Samsung worried in order of priority keeping in mind that the SGS4 at 80MM this year and N3 at about 20MM represent about 30% of the 350MM devices Samsung expects to sell in 2013.

Apple introducing lower-cost versions of the iPhone and iPad

Huawei, ZTE, Oppo, and Micromax stealing mid-range market share in emerging countries

Maintaining a consistent growth trajectory while the smartphone market is peaking

Protecting their margins

Running out of innovative things to do with Android so there's less differentiation between their phones and others

Ways of increasing on-device revenue and potentially cannibalizing ads and content revenue from Google and others

LG mimicking their h/w and s/w strategy

Anything HTC, Sony, and Motorola might do

HTC's problems having nothing to do with anyone but HTC. Here's how they went from being the number two seller of smartphones behind Apple in 2009 to having 4% market share in 2013. From another thread...

Where HTC has consistently dropped the ball is in the core details of their devices. Here are some examples:

When you know your overlay is heavy, would it ever be a good idea to put 768KB of RAM in a device (Sensation)?

When your competitor offered 8/16GB of onboard storage last year (i9000) would you offer your next flagship with 4GB (Sensation)?

Can putting a 1,800mAh battery and as little as 11GB of non-expandable storage in a device ever be a good idea; especially in a "flagship?” (One X)

Is ignoring removable batteries and/or expandable storage, features offered by the market leader, all that sensible when you're trying to recover from previous failures (One X/One)?

When your competitors (who sell tons more phones than you do) are piling on the s/w features is it a good idea to ignore them and even take some existing ones away (scenes, themes, widgets) (One)?

Is it a good idea to offer a radical camera that provides 1/2 to 2/3 less detail than your competitors when you're struggling to reclaim your former success? Especially if in testing the radical approach that cost you more to offer provides marginal benefit (One)?

How smart is it to announce launch dates when you aren't sure that some key components are going to be available to start production causing you to humiliate yourself publically by announcing a delayed and staggered new schedule (One)?

How smart is to ignore reparability so that your unique design requires twice the repair costs for your customers as well as greatly increasing your own warranty repair costs (One)?

Is it smart to ignore emerging markets where you'd sell a ton of low/mid-end devices to focus all of your energy on a single flagship, a segment you haven't been competitive in since 2010 (HTC)?

HTC has a long history of misreading the market and even responding to the obvious. They've also had a ton of execution problems. And while I hope the One’s their salvation it’s a lot of burden to put on a single device when the company as a whole is in such dreadful financial condition. But no matter what happens to HTC, they are solely responsible for their current situation based on decisions they made (or didn't make) dating back to 2010.

---------- Post added at 10:56 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:55 AM ----------

Check this from the article you linked...

Again, a reminder – Behavior such as Samsung’s is not uncommon in the world of tech coverage. It’s perhaps considered more normal in some parts of the world, but even we here at TNW are regularly offered to have our travel and accommodations covered in hopes that we’ll write about a specific brand during our overall coverage of an event.​