14 DAY TRIAL // Once upon a time, HTC seemed to be one of those companies innovative enough to leave a mark on the mobile industry, but poor management almost brought it to the brink of destruction. But the device-maker could be making a comeback in 2014, possibly in the tablet sector, PocketNow believes.
HTC are credited for launching the first major smartphone to be sporting a touchscreen and were behind the HP iPAQ and Palm Treo 650.
Back in 2009 the company kick-started the “quietly brilliant” campaign, and in 2010 they rolled out the first 4G capable smartphone in the US, called HTC Evo 4G.
HTC definitely proved it could innovate in the smartphone department, but what about tablets? In 2012 the company introduced the HTC Flyer tablet which featured a beautiful design (one of the company’s distinctive marks) and was made available via Sprint.
Sadly, the tablet proved to be a non-success and one of the reasons might have been the hefty $399 / €291 (on a two-year contract with the carrier) price-tag.
On the other hand, Google’s Nexus slates were selling for around $199 / €145 so it’s pretty easy to see why a lot of customers chose to go with the latter instead.
HTC’s second attempt to infiltrate the tablet market was a 10-inch slate sold exclusively through AT&T that sold for a premium $699 / €510. Needless to say, nobody paid much attention to it. But let’s take price out of the equation for a second and formulate another theory.
Three years ago, tablets weren't riding the wave like today and customers weren't exactly ready to receive a 10-incher. However, things have changed now, with the tablet market branching out into several specialized parts. There’s currently a market for business users, children, professionals working in risky environments and so on.
At this point, every brand vendor that matters is making tablets, so 2014 might be the right moment for HTC to start producing a slate. Back in November, we showed you an HTC tablet concept (poetically called Dark Shadow), which was quite a looker and a readers responded positively to it. So what is HTC waiting for?