Tim
In a recent sit down with Bloomberg, at least a couple of HTC executives spoke of having high hopes for the new year. Chang Chialin, chief financial officer and head of global sales for HTC stated quite simply, “We feel positive and optimistic about 2014 when compared to 2013.” The company is apparently feeling so good about 2014 that they are to release a wearable device later this year around Christmas time, and as we all know, that could be a very risky move unless you have a serious winner.
An HTC chairman, Cher Wang, spoke on the current wearable situation and essentially said that they have been focused on these devices for quite some time.
Many years ago we started looking at smartwatches and wearables, but we believe that we really have to solve the battery problems and the LCD light problems – these are customer-centric problems.
HTC had every right to have high hopes early last year, as they were about to launch one of the best looking Android smartphones of all time, the One. What HTC couldn’t control was the public’s response to the device, and unfortunately, Samsung out-marketed the company at every turn, leaving HTC hurting in the wallet. We can’t say that the $12 million deal with Robert Downey Jr. helped at all either, so we hope HTC learned a tough lesson about celebrity spokespeople.
HTC has an investor conference call scheduled for February 10. At that time, HTC will probably state that they lost a ton of cash, but that the successor to the One will be great and that they have serious plans for 2014.
Thoughts on HTC making a smartwatch? With a knack for making sexy hardware, we would give them the benefit of the doubt on creating a good device.
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