HTC has pushed back the release date for its new HTC One phone, following an embarrassing setback in which the a source told the Wall Street Journal the company was no longer a tier one customer for its component manufacturers. The new HTC One release date is reported to be in late April. The phone will hit stores in Germany, Taiwan, and the UK next week.

The challenge with the new April release date is it puts the HTC One squarely up against the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the media and advertising storm likely to accompany it.

The story of HTC in the past 18 months is one of Samsung consistently eating its lunch, so the new timing doesn’t bode well. Here’s how I put it a while back:

Samsung’s dominance has to a significant extent been at HTC’s expense. So the pressure is on with every new release for HTC to reverse this trend. Can the HTC One do that? Your guess is as good as mine, and given how little we know so far about the device, there’s just not much to go on. One thing is for sure: Samsung is a formidable competitor, having emerged as the key Apple rival in the premium smartphone market.

There’s a chart in that post that nicely illustrates how true this is. Anyway, rough timing for HTC fans.

For more specs on the HTC One check out our previous coverage here. Or take a look at the photos below: