Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC Corporation recently announced plans to launch a new "hero smartphone" device by the fourth quarter of this year, specifically in October.

HTC's latest smartphone device is the One M9 which was announced earlier this year during the Mobile World Congress event, and was released just last April 2015.

As a successor to the HTC One M8, the HTC One M9 handset has failed to satisfy consumers' expectations, according to reports. This prompted the co-founder and chairwoman of HTC, Cher Wang, to apologize to the company's shareholders by unveiling plans to release a new smartphone before the end of this year.

The Taiwanese company is reportedly planning to launch the new product in an effort to help improve itself in the smartphone business.

Pocket-lint has reported that the camera performance of HTC's One M9 smartphone did not do well against the likes of Samsung's Galaxy S6, Apple's iPhone 6 and LG's G4 smartphone.

According to Taiwan's daily English language newspaper, Taipei Times, the firm intends to release "a 'hero product' in October, and make significant improvements in innovation and design for the next flagship model next year."

Specifications and features of the upcoming hero handset remain a mystery as of this time. But since October is just around the corner, the features of the phone may show up within the next months before the release date.

Another rumor that also popped up earlier is the Taiwanese company's partnership with software giant Microsoft, on the new Windows 10 operating system. The rumors say HTC is planning to enable users of its One M9 device to upgrade their phones' operating system to Microsoft's Windows 10.

Since Microsoft plans to release the new operating system by July 29 of this year, an upgrade to Windows 10 is also expected to be available for the HTC One M8 handset, according to the rumors.