The head of HTC UK Phil Robertson has acknowledged that the company needs to 'get back to what made us great' after the Taiwanese manufacturer lost momentum in 2011.
He said HTC will focus more on hero devices and cut back on the number of phones it releases in the coming year, after outing a huge array of Android and Windows Phone devices last year.
Robertson said the company tried to do too much during the last calendar year, which contributed to its first fall in profits in the last two years, last quarter.
Too many products
Robertson said: "We have to get back to focusing on what made us great - amazing hardware and a great customer experience.
"We ended 2011 with far more products than we started out with. We tried to do too much.
"So 2012 is about giving our customers something special. We need to make sure we do not go so far down the line that we segment our products by launching lots of different SKUs."
With that in mind, the company is planning to focus more on smartphones than trying to compete with the iPad and other Android tablets.
Also, a smaller number of high-end smartphones are likely to dominate the landscape in the coming months, beginning with the launch of quad-core devices at February's Mobile World Congress event.
Via: TheNextWeb
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darth_daver
January 29th
6. Sorry for double post, but I've just read the HTC titan II review. Surely the best thing for any manufacturer to do is release the same phone on both OS's? It would reduce development costs but still give customers increased choice. Although I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft had some sort of exclusivity condition...
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darth_daver
January 29th
5. I think HTCs strategy last year went a bit wrong, but I hope releasing fewer phones doesn't restrict choice. I quite like the idea of having 3 or 4 main phones, but each phone having a choice of different designs (like having different size screens for example).
The problem I foresee for me personally, I want a phone with a mid sized screen but I also want the top spec. If companies restrict themselves to a few phones, then we'll all have less to chose from and therefore increasing the likelihood of not finding a phone we want.
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simon_m
January 27th
4. Agreed Bravadon - HTC completely diluted themselves with far, far too many handsets, and this is a great strategy and a big relief. HTC should keep a three-prong approach with an entry-level/PAYG phone (Wildfire S at the moment), a mid-range (Desire S at the moment) and a top-end (Incredible S) to take on the smartphone heavyweights. The flood of other irrelevant handsets just dilutes brand identity to the point where nobody knows who HTC are anymore. The Beats phones have also been a bit of a waste of time, just like Samsung's old fruitless tie with Bang and Olufsen.
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reaction80
January 26th
3. Ok blackbetty, you hate Windows Phone, we get it...
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bradavon
January 26th
2. You reckon? HTC went smartphone release crazy last year. So many were almost identical to. Did we really need the Desire S and Incredible S for example?
This is a good move on HTC's part. Get back to innovating and taking Samsung on!
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blackbetty
January 26th
1. Dumping Windows Phone 7 and concentrating on making great HTC Android handsets like Samsung and the HTC of a few years back.
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