HTC may have done the smartest thing any cellphone manufacturing company has done in ages, narrow differentiate and specialize. The company has seen mixed fortunes over the last two years with popularity soaring in early 2010 through to early 2011 and that same popularity waning over the latter part of 2011 with stocks sliding up to 42% over that period.
The reason for this is probably that the small company having enjoyed stellar performance thought for a moment that it could now play in the major leagues. This put it directly in the path of charging-rhino brands Apple and Samsung and as may be assumed, things got ugly.
HTC found itself in the middle of patent wars, dirty and very aggressive marketing stunts, competitors with near-limitless budgets and so at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, HTC announced they would be taking only one route, and that is launching a set of smartphones appealing to a niche market and that were highly specialized and have superior engineering.
Calling the range of phones the HTC One series, the company has decided it would be getting out of the broad range market approach and will only concentrate on developing niche phones.
The One series has three phones, the One X, One S, and One V, which all run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with a Sense 4 skin on top. The phones will feature high pedigree music and camera features that put the phones a class apart from would be competitors.
The music system will be powered by the Beats Electronics, which HTC bought a while back and is the company behind the iconic Beats By Dre earphones. This will give the new HTC phones far superior sound as compared to other phones.
The company has also invested heavily in camera features as the phones will sport 8MP cameras with advanced features for outdoor photography as well as low light image capturing. HTC says the new phones will offer a more native photography experience closer to that of a conventional camera.
