HTC held its much awaited press event today where CEO Peter Chou took the wraps off of the company’s latest flagship, the HTC One. It’s no secret that Chou’s company has had more than its fair share of troubles over the past couple of years. Its profits have continued to plummet and even though all its devices have had top-of-the-line specs, none have truly caught on with the average consumer. The name HTC just hasn’t gained the popularity of Samsung or Apple. In the fourth quarter of 2012, the company posted its worst income since 2004. On top of all of that, a report emerged last week claiming that HTC had thousands of angry engineers complaining of poor working conditions. It just hasn’t been a good 24 months for HTC.
Despite all of this, however, HTC CEO Peter Chou has remained optimistic and continued to claim that the “worst has passed” for HTC. In an interview with The Verge following today’s press event, Chou remained calm and confident and said that, among other things, he was very proud of what the company released in 2012.
When asked what HTC as a whole learned from its 2012 flagships, such as the One S and One X, Chou said that the devices had “a lot of innovation” in them, but marketing needs to be an intense focus for the company going forward. Well, we had to create a great product with a lot of innovation in it, and the reviews of those devices were very positive, but we failed to communicate with the people who really know and appreciate those products,” Chou said. “I think marketing execution is one of the things we learned from that and that’s why we have a new approach to our marketing. We want to drive change and we’re pushing innovation even more strongly than before and also drive change in marketing execution.” He went on to add that the company’s marketing needs to be “solid so people really get the message,” and that they need to zero in on and align certain markets.
Chou was later asked about the possibility of releasing a Nexus-style device with stock Android. He didn’t seem too thrilled about the idea, saying that “as a company, we really want to offer something unique and differentiated and HTC Sense helps us to do that. If you don’t have the kind of deep capability it provides, you won’t be able to do things like BlinkFeed and our custom camera experience, you won’t be able to differentiate, you won’t be able to really drive the innovation.”
When asked if the company was looking into other operating systems, such as Ubuntu, Chou said that HTC is “only focusing on Android and Windows.”
Chou also didn’t deny the possibility of a HTC tablet at some point down the line, saying that the company has a “definite interest in tablets, we just need to figure out how we can differentiate a tablet product.”
Finally, the executive wouldn’t comment on what was next in line for HTC, adding that they are “very focused” on the HTC One.
What do you think of the HTC One? Will it help HTC regain its position as a top Android manufacturer? Let us know down in the comments!
Source: The Verge