About an hour ago, the US division of HTC took to Twitter to tease a big announcement slated for Thursday, January 12th, 2017. The teaser image shown above doesn’t reveal much save for the said date and a cryptic message stating “for U.” Furthermore, the same image was sent in an email to members of the press worldwide. Unfortunately, the said email isn’t any more revealing than this mysterious tweet, as it only states that the Taiwanese consumer electronics manufacturer wanted to reveal the date of its “next big announcement.”
Curiously enough, the company’s announcement is scheduled only four days after the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show 2017 wraps up. Given how the said Las Vegas event is usually the place where tech giants announce their latest and greatest products, it’s strange that HTC opted to save its mysterious reveal for a time when everyone will still be talking about all of the cutting edge technology that’s bound to be presented at CES. Of course, HTC will also be showcasing some of its new products in Las Vegas next month, which just makes this teaser even more puzzling.
As for its contents, “for U” doesn’t give us much to go on, though it suggests that the company could unveil a similarly named product. Back in the days of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the Taiwanese phone maker launched the HTC Desire U, a low-end 4-inch smartphone. However, if another “U” phone is indeed in the works, it’s extremely unlikely that HTC would tease its announcement seeing how that would certainly lead to many people being extremely disappointed by an underwhelming reveal. So, whatever HTC has in store for us next is bound to be big.
On the other hand, January seems a bit early for the company to unveil a successor to the HTC 10 flagship, which just makes this announcement of an announcement even more curious. Then again, that’s the whole point of a teaser – to intrigue people and prompt them to talk about your brand. In that regard, HTC certainly accomplished what it was aiming for. It remains to be seen whether the company will provide any further clues about this upcoming announcement, but even if it doesn’t, we’ll obviously know more in just a few weeks.