Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowl
I wouldn't be surprised if HTC wait until google opens up the market place for larger screen devices, it will be much easier to bring products to the market more quickly if you don't have to mess around building your own store like most of the others seem to have to do currently.
I think his current comments are hiding their true intentions because after all they don't mind competing in the crowded arena of android mobile phones.
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I agree, HTC phones are nice enough (I have one), but there's not a huge big difference between the HTC smartphones, Moto, Samsung, LG, Sony/Errickson, Nokia, Apple, etc. If HTC didn't want to participate in markets where they did not have differentiation, they'd get out of phones. We may all get caught up in some of the new features and who has the technological lead this week, but ultimately the differences are getting to the point where they're not all that significant. Granted, there's still a lot of progress and so forth, screen quality, processor speed, battery life, so a new phone is generally better than an old phone (and the 2-year contracts in the U.S. mean that frequently you have 1+ year on an obsolete phone to deal with), but the differences from manufacturer to manufacturer are not that significant at any given moment. As an example, the iPhone 4, which is so hot right now and selling like hotcakes, is arguably already obsoleted by the Droid-X. Next week, it will be HTC or someone else. It's leap-frog out there.
So I think I'd interpret the HTC statement too literally, but something more along the lines of:
- Gee, our Engineers are pretty busy with phones, and...
- We really did not expect Apple to sell so many iPads
- So we're probably going to sit out this dance for now, at least until...
- Google or someone else comes up with a nice Linux Tablet OS + Marketplace
The revolution here isn't really with eReaders or smartphones or tablets, it's with portable computers with different screen sizes and decent battery life that you don't have to be a techie to understand or operate.