Let’s face the facts, HTC isn’t a very healthy company right now, and every mobile phone maker that has entered a phase of decline has either gone bankrupt or been chopped up and sold for parts. A few weeks ago, the Financial Times reported that HTC was going to build three phones for Amazon. Today, there’s even more good news, courtesy of a report from KGI Securities Investment Trust. They say they have it on good authority that HTC has entered into a partnership with China Mobile to make between four and six handsets next year.

Now this can be interpreted in one of two ways. First, we could be seeing HTC going back to its roots, meaning they go back to being a company that builds phones to spec for other companies to slap their name on the front. There’s nothing wrong with that, obviously, but it makes having a team of software engineers to create the Sense Android layer seem a bit redundant. And that’s really the second option here, China Mobile could simply be launching four to six HTC phones, phones that HTC was already planning on launching, but they’ve been slightly tweaked to better sell the China Mobile brand.

Can HTC honestly turn things around? These guys at KGI Securities say HTC will sell roughly 20 million phones in 2014. Putting that number into some context, Samsung recently said they’re going to sell 100 million Galaxy S devices and Galaxy Note devices (combined) this year. So yes, HTC is tiny, but that doesn’t mean they have to disappear.

If they trim the fat, things might actually start looking up.