HTC's beautiful new One phone is better built than the Samsung Galaxy S III. Cast from a single piece of aluminum, with a super-sharp screen and incredible low-light camera performance, it just sings quality. This could be HTC's best chance to grab some profit share back from the dominant leader - and if HTC can't do it with this phone, perhaps nobody can.

Samsung and Apple dominate the smartphone market right now. According to IDC numbers, Samsung has 29 percent of the smartphone market and Apple has 21.8 percent. Nobody else has more than 5 percent. They dominate profits, too, making almost all of the profits in the smartphone world.

HTC has spent way too much time being "quietly brilliant," with an accent on "quietly." Trained for years to take a back seat to carriers as a white-label device maker, HTC was caught flat-footed by the move to manufacturer-run marketing. On one level, this is inexcusable, because Apple started that shift in 2007. But everybody else fooled themselves that Apple was somehow special and unique until 2011, when Samsung showed that this wasn't a fluke, it was a trend.

Now the carriers offer some support, to be sure, but what separates the leaders from the followers in the U.S. smartphone market is that manufacturer-driven branding. It's Samsung's blanket of blue across New York, its catchy TV ads which call out Apple, and its ability to sell the same Galaxy S III phone on every carrier, something HTC has never been able to pull off. Once again, Samsung and Apple aren't magically invincible there; Motorola's combination of offering the same phone on every carrier with powerful advertising was what left it rolling in Razr money from 2004-2006. But it's clear what ingredients are needed (beyond a great phone) to guarantee sales.

Why Samsung and Apple are So Profitable
I think the profit secret, though, lies in something Samsung and Apple have but HTC, Sony, and Huawei don't: amazing control over their supply chains. Apple's dominance over its suppliers is legendary. Tim Cook rose to CEO by mastering the supply chain, and Apple keeps a huge bucket of cash at hand in part so it can do things like buy up massive amounts of flash memory at ultra-low prices.

Samsung, on the other hand, makes almost everything itself, and can be its own best customer. Screens, processors, flash memory; Samsung's incredibly broad product line means that it can be first in line for the best parts at the lowest prices. The company's huge scale means that when it needs to order from third parties like Qualcomm, it can negotiate great deals.

Other companies have part of the equation, or they're building it. Watch Huawei make processors. LG has a great displays division. HTC is great at finding and nurturing new technologies, like it's done with 1080p screens in handheld smartphones. But nobody else owns the complete package like Samsung does, or has the ability to throw weight around like Apple does. That puts every other company at a major disadvantage to the two behemoths.

Can This Be The One?
So HTC has major structural humps to get over if it wants to rise up into the top echelon of smartphone makers once more. I think the One could be the product to do it.

The Galaxy S III is an excellent phone, but it has its weaknesses, and I suspect those will continue with the Galaxy S IV. Most notably, it doesn't feel premium. Samsung has a penchant for using flimsy plastics in its body design; once you've held an HTC, Nokia, or Apple phone made of glass, metal or high-quality polycarbonate, Samsung models tend to feel a bit cheap.

Samsung's TouchWiz Android overlay also has less visual elegance than HTC's Sense. Samsung's mobile division is focused on functionality, and TouchWiz piles a lot of features in there (see my Top 10 Samsung Galaxy S III Tips and Tricks for examples.) But HTC's Sense, topped by its signature clock widget, has always had more panache.

The HTC One could become a prestigious, premium leader in the global Android lineup. HTC will never match Samsung's volume, but it could carve out a niche on quality for discerning buyers. To get there, though, HTC is going to have to sell the heck out of this phone. Our TVs and bus stops will tell the tale.

For more, see PCMag's Hands On With the HTC One and the slideshow above. Also check out our analysis of the HTC One's "ultrapixels" versus megapixels.