Taiwanese mobile manufacturer, HTC, is getting ready to ride out a rocky few months in which it expects to lose about £1.4 billion in revenue, as it clears the way for its next generation of smartphone handsets.

This is according to a statement made by the firm and published by Tech Crunch, in which it stated that taking an earnings hit is inevitable, as it goes through a transitional period.

The first three months of the year will therefore see a 34 per cent drop off in revenue at HTC and the company is pinning all of its hopes on consumers getting into the mobiles which are revealed at this month's Mobile World Congress (MWC) event in Barcelona.

The two handsets which will be leading the way in 2012 will be the HTC Ville, a mid-range dual core smartphone, along with the HTC Edge, which will be an all-out powerhouse with a quad-core processor and high definition display.

In 2010 and 2011, it was possible for HTC to have two big hits thanks to first the Desire and then the Sensation. However, major rival, Samsung, has shown that its own Galaxy S series of devices are more than a match for HTC's handsets and so the tables have been turned somewhat.

Android 4.0 is going to be the platform which powers this year's HTC smartphones, but the real test will come when critics get their hands on version four of the firm's own Sense interface.

Sense 4.0 will need to retain the qualities of its predecessors, while eliminating weak spots and giving Samsung's TouchWiz interface a run for its money.

Of course with Google attempting to instil more unity in the Android market via the latest edition of the operating system, the distinctions may not be as marked as they have been in the past.

Android is not the only smartphone platform which HTC uses, as handsets like the Windows Phone-based Titan attest to, but it is certainly the software which will help it to turn its fortunes around and make up for early losses in 2012.

The biggest threat to this is definitely the Samsung Galaxy S3, which could singlehandedly sideline HTC's offerings. The HTC brand is strong enough to survive a tough few months, but in the fast paced mobile market, it cannot afford to remain in the red for too much longer.