HTC sold quite a few smartphones in the 00’s and 10’s, but has slowly disappeared from the scene. It’s coming back bit-by-bit and this time with a midrange Android device, but where was the company all along?
HTC is coming out with a new Android smartphone soon. In all likelihood this will be the U24 Pro which will sit among the midrange models in terms of specifications.
If you may have thought that the company was no longer doing anything at all, or that it has bought a company’s license from HTC, just like HMD did with Nokia, you are wrong. The company is mainly focusing on another interesting market.
This will be HTC’s new Android smartphone
First, let’s look at HTC’s HTC U24 Pro. It is not the company’s “comeback smartphone,” as it came out with a new Desire in late 2022 and the U23 Pro in 2023. The new Android smartphone will likely build on the latter model.
The HTC U23 Pro was in the mid-range segment at launch. For 444 euros you got a smartphone with a Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processor, 6.7-inch 120Hz OLED display, 12 GB RAM, 256 GB storage (which was expandable through microSD), 4 rear cameras and a 4600 mAh battery.
The HTC 23 Pro. (Image: HTC)
Although not a whole lot is known about the HTC U24 Pro yet, leaked Geekbench scores have already made some things clear. For example, this Android smartphone runs on the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chip and has 12 GB of working memory.
Although the Android device is labeled with model number 2QDA100 on Geekbench and the performance matches, it really seems to be a successor to the U23 Pro and thus the name U24 Pro is obvious. In all likelihood, another new mid-ranger around the same price.
HTC is a big player in the field of VR glasses
It’s the third smartphone since late 2022, but before that there was nothing in the smartphone field for quite a while. That was because the company shifted its focus to VR with its Vive line, which targets gamers as well as businesses.
While there are several different classes of VR glasses, the Vive XR Elite is perhaps the company’s biggest flagship. This all-in-one headset is powerful, lightweight and can wirelessly stream PC games and data.
The company is focusing more on AR and VR these days. (Image: EPA/ALI HAIDER)
But businesses are also using HTC headsets. For example, it is used in various VR gaming halls, but also doctors, for example, work with VR glasses. They can see scans in 3D and thereby determine better treatment.
Why had HTC stopped using Android smartphones?
In 2012, HTC’s then CEO said that, above all, it wanted the image of a high quality brand. Cheap smartphones did not belong to that, according to him. Yet something else was also at play. At that time, Chinese brands were slowly taking over the low-end segment, putting pressure on HTC’s smartphones.
In addition, HTC also wanted to capitalize on the Windows smartphone. Something that ended up being a huge failure. Then again, the brand’s flagships , such as the HTC One, could not compete with Apple and Samsung. So at that point, the company’s smartphone branch was a sinking ship. Even huge marketing campaigns could not help.
In 2017, Google took over part of HTC’s smartphone branch to further develop its own phones: the Pixel line, and it seemed to be definitely over with the HTC smartphone.
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So now the brand is back, but with a different strategy. It focuses mainly on the mid-range segment with 1 or 2 new models a year.
But whether the brand can really become as big again with the Android phones as it once was, that seems a pipe dream.
