HTC is in dire need to reinvent themselves, or to offer higher value for their devices than their competitors. They want to be more than just a phone maker. They want to be the phone company that you keep returning to and keep buying their devices. Because of this they’ve made a bunch of investments over the past year, such as the investment in Dr. Dre Beats Audio, or more importantly the one in OnLive gaming service, which brings us to today’s news of licesing the PS Suite from Sony.
The PS Suite license will give them a market and emulator for all Sony’s PS1 games. On top of this they will get access to the Tegra Zone for their devices with Tegra 3, and Qualcomm’s Game Command app store for their devices with Qualcomm chips. I think these gaming pseudo-markets are a great idea because it saves people the trouble of scouring for the best games in the Android Market, and they have easy access to them this way.
HTC needs a much needed shot in the arm this year, after last year they followed a flawed strategy of flooding the market with device after device. They thought that would give them the most money, which it did – except it had unintended consequences in the long term, because people got frustrated with their strategy and their device brands, which became increasingly more meaningless as HTC changed name after name.
I have a feeling HTC will do alright in 2012, with thinner phones, quad core and Krait processors, and a more content oriented strategy. Of course competition will be tough as ever, especially from Samsung, and Motorola is promising to change and improve their strategy in 2012, too – not to mention that they are being bought by Google, so interesting changes will come from that, too.
Sony’s announcement of PS Suite last year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lvYTiBqzuc