Taipei, Jan 5 (IANS): The year just-ended was terrible for Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC as its revenue dropped to an all-time low, the media reported.

According to the handset maker's just-released year-end 2018 numbers, HTC took in just NT$23.74 billion (or $770 million) during 2018, the lowest in all its years as a public company.

"HTC's December 2018 revenue clocked in at 1.3 billion Taiwan new dollars, the second lowest month in 2018. That's a month when most device makers see a sales uptick.

"In fact, HTC's revenues have dropped progressively throughout 2018 with the full year coming to 61.78 per cent lower than 2017," the Android Police reported late on Friday.

Back in May 2013, when the company witnessed booming sales, and when smartphones like the HTC One M7, One Mini and One Max made it one of the best handset players on the planet, it came in at 29 billion Taiwan new dollars, according to TechCrunch.

A year ago, rumour mills were abuzz that search engine giant Google would acquire HTC but the former ended up just buying HTC's Pixel team in a $1.1 billion deal.

The deal involved over 2,000 HTC engineers moving over to Google.

However, HTC's contract manufacturing operations and VR division were reportedly not affected, but a substantial majority of the smartphone R&D team went on to join Google.