Chinese vendor TechFaith said that it is planning to launch an “extreme ruggedised camera” early next year, following a rugged smartwatch announced recently, as it looks to counter weakness in its core white-label device design business.

Defu Dong, chairman and CEO, said that “our focus on niche opportunities has given us a more defensible market position but the unit volumes in the orders for our products have been much lower than those in more popular mass market designs. To expand our addressable market and increase order unit volumes, we are building our portfolio of offerings in the new wearables segment.”

In a statement, Deyou Dong, president and COO, said the company is also looking to bring 4G products to market to support customer demand.

“There is a fundamental shift taking place in the dynamic mobile market with many carriers upgrading their networks to support 4G/LTE technology. While this has negatively impacted our shipments in the near-term, we plan to launch new 4G/LTE capable devices and plan to upgrade some of our existing devices to have 4G/LTE capability next year.”

In the third quarter of 2014, the company saw a net loss of $4.6 million, compared with a profit of $260,000 in the prior-year period, on revenue of $21.5 million, down from $29.9 million.

The company is continuing to “actively monitor our operating costs as we navigate the challenging handset market and continue to execute our plan to build our real-estate portfolio”.