A new wave of mobile phones is about to launch and first out of the starting gate for Google is not Samsung or Motorola or Sony – it’s comparative minnow HTC.
The Taiwan-based company’s new ‘One’ series of phones, headed by the flagship ‘One X’, has generated more excitement among British networks than any device perhaps since Apple’s latest iPhone. That’s in part due to a huge marketing push led by the firm’s TV commercial featuring a photography student using the phone to take a picture while skydiving, but few mobile phone company’s fans have the ardour of HTC’s.
Coming to mainstream attention in 2009 with the best-selling Hero and then Desire handsets, HTC went on to make the first device with a dedicated button for social networking site Facebook. It was also the first mobile phone manufacturer chosen by Google to produce a device in direct collaboration with the search giant.
Now after a rocky intervening 18-months, the firm is resurgent and its new premise is refreshing: co-founder and chief executive Peter Chou says “It's my personal mission, and my mission for everyone at HTC, to come up with phones with features that really matter". That means a focus on cameras, music and ease of use that many other manufacturers are seeking to ape.
Announcing the new range in January, the firm presented Chou as a technology sage not completely unlike the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. It was Chou’s own history that was used to showcase the new device’s features, and it was he who continues to talk about his firm offering “a unique blend of form and function that will take Android to new heights”.
And that’s consistently been HTC’s message – its new tagline for the One series is “Amazing camera. Authentic sound”. As new buyers come as much from geeks as they do from people buying their first smartphone, what matters is not technical specifications but what these devices do.
So as rival phones increasingly offer similar music and camera functions, HTC is investing further in its ‘Sense’ interface, which aims to make the phone easier to use and more intuitive, whether that’s via a good-looking weather forecast or automatically selecting the best photograph from a selection you’ve just taken.
“At its essence, the mobile phone is the most personal item you have in your possession," says Chou. "HTC Sense was created to magnify your ability to create and define your own unique mobile experience."
Analysts are backing HTC too. Ben Wood of CCS Insight says that competition is ferocious in the face of “a rampant Apple, hungry new Chinese brands and Samsung’s eye-watering marketing spend “. But he adds that “the HTC One devices are strong products that will ensure HTC sees further success in 2012”.