HTC has dismissed recent speculation claiming it would quit the smartphone market with its latest U12+ being the last of its models.

HTC maintained it will continue strengthening its smartphone business with new models to be released at year-end 2018 and in early 2019.

HTC said it will not give up its handset business as it believes that the handset has become indispensable to human life and that the related key VR technology will play a key role for the future development of mobile devices.

In addition to continuing optimizing its VR platform and enriching its VR/AR content, HTC said it will also exert efforts to integrate related technologies including AI, blockchain and 5G to roll out new product lines for the 5G era.

HTC revealed that it plans to launch a 6GB RAM/128GB ROM version of HTC U12 life at the end of December and also to release multiple models of consumer and enterprise devices at year-end 2018 and in early 2019.