HTC has signalled its attention to enter the wearable market, where other Android OEMs such as Sony and Samsung have launched wearable devices within the last 6 to 12 months, even further back in Sony’s case.
HTC Chairwoman, Cher Wang, has told Bloomberg that the Taiwanese company was making plans to release a wearable device by the holiday shopping season. In the interview, Ms Wang stated:
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 plans to revamp its marketing area this year, an area which Wang admits has not been a strong point for the company, despite a high-profile campaign featuring Robert Downey Jr. “To tell the truth, we never think marketing is that important — this is really not very good,” and she has pledged that the company will be “smart” about how it spends it dollars wisely on any new marketing campaigns in the future.
Of course, this only re-enforces what CEO and founder Peter Chou stated last year, when he said the wearables category was an important one for the phone maker, which has struggled over the last few years. Despite most of their devices being well received by tech industry experts, sales have been continually falling.
The Bloomberg report which Wang was interviewed for, also states that there will be an “updated” version of the HTC One coming very soon, which is said to have a twin lensed camera along with a similar industrial designed body to the One. Based on this it would be similar to the leaked specs and pictures we have been seeing relating to the upcoming so called HTC M8 device.
It would be interesting to see what the company will bring to the market as their alternative to Sony and Samsung’s wearable devices, but until then we can only speculate as to what their plans maybe.
Do you think HTC can launch a wearable device like a smart watch? Do you think it could help HTC’s bottom line sales wise?
