Kind of sad to read this, i knew they were struggling but didn't realize it had become this bad. I am on my second HTC phone, First was the Inspire 4G now i have the One X+ though i miss the Aluminium of the Inspire the One X is seeming to be a good phone does everything i need it to do seamlessly. Pick your head up HTC ill still hold out for ya. Ps, feel free to shoot me out and HTC One. ;)

Sure, nice design, nice screen, good specifications. But unless you buy a phone every year it's got an epoxied battery, and no sd slot. To make things worse it ships with android 4.1 and HTC has a poor record of upgrades.
No question it looks nicer than the S4. But the S4 can be had with an open bootloader, ships with android 4.2, and can have the battery replaced.
If you want your phone to track the newest versions of android and have a battery that's 100% as good at 2 years as it was on day one then get the S4.

Second Fronty's comments. HTC has some great products but they make some really baffling decisions here in the US market. Example: The two biggest criticisms of the One are the lack of memory card expandability and the battery that can't be replaced. Then we read about variants of the One going to Japan equipped with SD card slots and to China with two SIM slots, an SD card slot and a replaceable battery. Considering that, the US market got the single-digit salute with our version of the One.
Then there is the HTC First. The 'Facebook' phone. For a company on the ropes that was a truly idiotic move and possibly a move they won't recover from - given all the other wounds HTC is currently bleeding from.
If HTC had designed the One with the same general looks but with a memory card slot and replaceable battery I would bet it would be the number One seller right now - even if it was slightly heavier and thicker as a result of the design change. I don't think HTC will ever learn...

Have to agree with what has been said so far. HTC seemed to listen to hype instead of going it's own way. So they turning the US version of the one into a wannabe Iphone with its non-replaceable battery and lack of SD card slot. Those two factors are huge.
Adding to that Verizon only has the lesser DNA, again without an SD card slot, which removed nearly 50% of the US market.
HTC can make a great phone. The Thunderbolt is a prime example. They decided to follow instead of lead.

Bleeding or bloodletting?

Something strange happened to me while using mny pre-production HTC One X: the battery became physically disconnected inside, killing the phone. I picked up a production model, which would routinely overheat and the device would randomly reboot as many as ten times per minute, before finally discharging the battery completely after little or no use over the course of a day.
Prior to owning an HTC phone, I was an iPhone, and the Samsung Galaxy S2 user, all of which were "okay" to "pretty cool". But I never, ever had battery issues. Sure, I had the Mophie Juice battery packs for my iPhones, but I'd never thought about or cared about needing the ability to replace a faulty battery.
I loved my HTC One X. I was annoyed by its complete lack of forward thinking regarding expandable memory, but that was really it. Form and function were fantastic. Just that damned battery...
So, when the HTC One was announced, I was thrilled that the camera was superior to anything else on the market, and that they had finally upped the memory to 64GB. But I was still plagued by fears of a non-replaceable battery. So, I opted for the Samsung Galaxy S4. The camera is pretty awful at any light level below bright sunlight, but the display is better, and the expandable memory is somewhat better at 16GB internal (if you remove most of the bloatware), plus up to 64GB external. Oh, and I can replace the battery.

'Bizzaro world' is right. It's amusing to read about this or that also-ran phone being declared 'best' when regular normal users keep rating the iPhone 5 top. It just got the highest ranking in JD Power's ratings for the NINTH time in a row.

They made some poor decisions so far (Beats audio, facebook phone etc.) but HTC One still isn't quite a home run. It doesn't have a removable battery or SD card, it runs Android 4.1 instead of 4.2 like the S4, and it isn't available on the Verizon network.
Not being on Verizon is a big deal for both sales potential and marketing reasons as many people base purchases on advice from friends, websites, and sales reps anyway. Big marketing budgets are nice but not essential.
Their struggles aren't over yet but I am sure if all their flagship phones from here forward are at least as good as the One things should stay interesting.
As for Verizon not carrying the phone they realize HTC's position probably means they get to make the terms for this round but at the same time I think AT&T is now the slightly larger carrier. AT&T had huge growth by offering the iPhone when Verizon wouldn't. Verizon still has the S4 but by shunning HTC One they might be securing their new 2nd place tier of the podium for a while in the process.

Battery SD But most importantly ... NOT LISTENING! There have been plenty of people telling them this for at least the past 18 months, but they went ahead anyway.
Here's a nice, simple easy idea HTC Galaxy announced the pure Android version of the S4 How about HTC One-A (or the next Nexus version) - Pure Android - SD - Battery
THEN you've got a killer

Excellent insightful article. I disagree with one of your final conclusions though, about HTC being a company worth rooting for. I presume a "root for the underdog" sentiment, and I do agree competition is good for the consumer. But HTC it seems has put itself into the underdog category, as you cite, by several errors in market judgment. I don't want to root for a company that hasn't shown it's capable of doing enough right things to hang in there for the time when buyers of its products need its support...and it's gone under. Underdog to me, as in baseball for example, describes a good team that nobody expects to go the distance, but has a sleeper roster of talent, good management, and most of all, a deep desire to win. Seems to me if the top brass is deserting the ship, it's time to either put the captain in a rowboat, or go with a company that has fought it's way to the top against daunting odds -- a true underdog in other words -- and that company is Samsung. I know they'll be around for a long time because they really refine their products and create good new ones, along with controlling a great deal of their manufacturing process. That's the key to megapower, and they've come a long way toward being top dog in a lot of product areas. I've got several Samsung products in my house now, including several 830 SSD which have made my computer run like a top without a single blue screen or slow down or crash in 18 months...my first such experience in 30 years of computing...and an early BluRay player that is still working in top condition. Also digital tape recorders, camcorders etc. Samsung was a real underdog vs. Apple. It's the company I rooted for a couple years ago to challenge the iPhone. And they've done it. Thanks for an excellent article though, very interesting.