New report claims the HTC U12 Life will...not be made by HTC

Word of HTC's struggles has become a norm over the past year. The company was said to have laid off a significant portion of its workforce, and also shut down smartphone operations in India. If that didn't key you in on how close we are to seeing the Taiwanese OEM shut down, a new report on the production of the upcoming U12 Life may just do the trick.

According to reports, The U12 Life will not be made by HTC. Instead, it will be produced by another company, albeit one currently unknown. This is likely due to HTC being unable to shoulder the costs of production, and would, ironically, mirror the relationship between HTC and Google on the Pixel 2. 

While moving production of the device to an ODM is an attempt at risk mitigation, we're not sure how effective it would be. The U11 Life, like all recent HTC devices, fell flat on its face at launch, a combination of poor pricing and a lackluster specification sheet succeeding at killing whatever chances at commercial success the device's Android One badge granted it. That considered, we don't expect the U12 Life to do any better when—if, even—it is launched.