HTC reminds us it's still around, having no plans to throw in the towel
After the unlikely resurgence of the Nokia and BlackBerry brands, hardcore fans of the company behind the first-ever Android smartphone may have held out hope of a similar revival with or without help from the outside.
But it’s virtually impossible to mount a mainstream mobile industry comeback with decidedly nichey devices like the blockchain-powered Exodus 1 and little else. Rumor has it there’s no HTC U13 flagship in the pipeline either, although for what it’s worth, the company is denying speculation about an exit from the handset market.
In all honesty, we had no idea such gossip existed in the first place, but considering how much money HTC managed to lose over the past few years without actually selling that much stuff, quitting the mobile business certainly made sense.
Of course, Vive VR headsets haven’t exactly blown up either, so perhaps the timing is not ideal for HTC to put all its eggs in one (fledgling) basket. Going forward, the company plans to continue “strengthening its smartphone business”, as well as further optimize its virtual reality platform, expecting key VR technologies to play a major role in the “future development of mobile devices.”
HTC is obviously not ready to get very specific about its smartphone business “strengthening” intentions just yet, merely promising new releases for the end of this year and early 2019 as well.
Before you get too excited, HTC is technically not preparing an all-new phone for a “year-end 2018” commercial debut. Instead, the 6GB RAM/128GB ROM version of the already released U12 Life is looking at a wider-scale rollout soon. That’s... still better than nothing, right?
But it’s virtually impossible to mount a mainstream mobile industry comeback with decidedly nichey devices like the blockchain-powered Exodus 1 and little else. Rumor has it there’s no HTC U13 flagship in the pipeline either, although for what it’s worth, the company is denying speculation about an exit from the handset market.
In all honesty, we had no idea such gossip existed in the first place, but considering how much money HTC managed to lose over the past few years without actually selling that much stuff, quitting the mobile business certainly made sense.
Of course, Vive VR headsets haven’t exactly blown up either, so perhaps the timing is not ideal for HTC to put all its eggs in one (fledgling) basket. Going forward, the company plans to continue “strengthening its smartphone business”, as well as further optimize its virtual reality platform, expecting key VR technologies to play a major role in the “future development of mobile devices.”
HTC is obviously not ready to get very specific about its smartphone business “strengthening” intentions just yet, merely promising new releases for the end of this year and early 2019 as well.
Before you get too excited, HTC is technically not preparing an all-new phone for a “year-end 2018” commercial debut. Instead, the 6GB RAM/128GB ROM version of the already released U12 Life is looking at a wider-scale rollout soon. That’s... still better than nothing, right?
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