Troubled smartphone and VR company HTC announced another poor set of sales for September 2018, as signs of any form of turnaround remain absent.

For the month, sales of TWD1.26 billion ($40.6 million) were down 80.7 per cent year-on-year. Taking into account that September 2017 was a relatively strong month for the company, sales were down 9.6 per cent from the prior month, and HTC’s website does not show a poorer period (figures are available back to 2005).

In the nine months to end-September, sales of TWD19.61 billion were more than halved from TWD46.37 billion.

HTC’s sales have been on a downward slide for years, with the occasional high-spot when a new device is launched to the market. But even these bumps are less pronounced (the company has seen just one month of sequential growth this year, and no year-on-year improvements at all).

As its core smartphone business has struggled, the company placed its bet on VR as a growth engine. But this market is still nascent and as yet has not provided much of an uptick for anyone in the industry.

HTC was reported to be making yet more job cuts in order to trim its costs, but with little sign it can reinvigorate sales, cuts alone will not help. The company offloaded some assets to Google earlier this year, giving its balance sheet a healthy bump, but again this alone is not a solution.