At the recent launch of the HTC U Ultra and U Play in Taipei, Engadget's Richard Lai interviewed Chialin Chang, HTC's President of Smartphone and Connected Devices business. During the interview, Mr. Chang confirmed that HTC is only planning to release 6 to 7 smartphones during 2017.
The move will be a significant drop in the number of phones launched by the company compared to recent years. Chang reports that the idea behind this is to allow HTC to focus on the core features of their phones, and therefore release higher quality products to contend with other manufacturers. Chang went on to say that the main selling point of these devices would be their machine learning integration, which several OEMs are currently experimenting with. No other major Android device manufacturer produces so few phones each year, as Samsung for example released over 30 phones in 2016.
According to Phandroid, the number of devices that HTC has released in previous years are as follows:
- 2016: 15 Phones
- 2015: 25 Phones
- 2014: 34 Phones
It is no secret that HTC has been struggling financially and this move could help assuage the problem. Q3 for 2016 saw the Taiwanese company make operating losses of NT$2 Billion ($63.3 million USD) and net losses after tax of NT$1.8 billion ($57 million USD).
It will be interesting to see how this works for HTC and hopefully they can release a few great phones rather than a large number of average ones. The U Ultra and U Play look to be a good start for HTC though and if you are interested in either device be sure to visit the HTC U Ultra and U Play forums!
Source: Engadget
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