The launch of the “One” series smartphones from HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s No. 5 smartphone brand, at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week received mixed responses from foreign investors.
“HTC’s new devices and strategy put it more into competition with LG or Motorola, as it cannot compete with Apple’s entire ecosystem and Samsung’s scale, price and component advantages,” Macquarie Equities Research said in a report yesterday.
“We like these devices, but do not think they can steal customers from Samsung and Apple, which are also scheduled to launch new phones in the coming three months,” it said.
At the world’s top mobile phone exposition held in Barcelona, Spain, HTC announced its brand-new flagship One series containing three new models — HTC One X, HTC One S and HTC One V.
One of the selling points is that the phones offer 25GB of two-year free storage from Dropbox, a cloud application that can be used by consumers to store images.
In addition, HTC One phones have built in various functions that allow users to take quality pictures even in unfavorable lighting conditions and to take pictures during video recordings.
According to Morgan Stanley, the One series attracted lots of interest at the MWC, but HTC would have to brand itself as the maker offering the best “camera experience” through heavy marketing to enhance public awareness.
This would be harder than for Samsung Electronics Inc, which can brand itself as a leader in display quality through the AMOLED panel in its Galaxy series, Apple Inc — which can focus on music or MP3 experience by leveraging the success of the iPod — or Sony Corp, which can duplicate its digital still camera experience, Morgan Stanley said.
HTC plans to streamline the number of models this year and rebrand them under the same family.
While Macquarie and Morgan Stanley were unconvinced by the launch of the One series, Goldman Sachs was more optimistic.
“We were impressed HTC seems to have resolved most of its hardware issues in the second half of last year. Its new marketing strategy of focusing on segmentation and killer features [camera and audio] should position HTC to regain consumer mindshare,” Goldman Sachs said in a report released yesterday.
HTC expects its global launch of the One family to start next month through more than 140 operators worldwide.
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