A LETTER TO HTC

Dear HTC,

As an avid fan and regular user of HTC’s products over the years, I have tracked with pleasure the rise of the company from an OEM manufacturer to a leading independent Smartphone manufacturer in the world with double digit market share of the global Smartphone market. HTC has come to dominate the landscape with its Android and Windows OS mobile phones which have traditionally been known for superior build quality and software customizations.

At the same time, I was not surprised by the recent underperformance of the company in Q3 2011 in terms of sale and profits, or the beating the stock price got in the wake of the same. Things have not been looking up for the company and competitors like Samsung and Apple have continued to outperform HTC in various respects.

With the vested interest of being the beneficiary of HTC’s future products, and the experience of having extensively used and reviewed various Smartphones (HTC and otherwise) over the years, I thought I should finally communicate to HTC my views on how it can take certain affirmative steps in 2012 to push back on the competition and asserting its position in the Smartphone market. So here goes –

1.            HTC needs to do away with the business strategy of releasing multiple variants of high end phones with minor spec variations, eg: Sensation, Sensation XE, Sensation XL, Vivid etc. Each of the successful companies has had one thing in common….they have launched one and only one flagship across the globe (with minor variations as required due to geographical and carrier requirements) and have backed it up fully in terms of specs and support to gain market dominance. Case in point being Apple Iphone of Samsung Galaxy S II. Releasing many high end phones with minor variations not only leaves the consumers confused, they also feel short changed where they have bought one high end phone from HTC and see another high end model having some specs which theirs doesn’t have.

2.            Leading out of the foregoing, HTC needs to launch a single high end flagship device in 2012…or to be more specific…one flagship each for Android and Windows Phone.

3.            The Flagship model needs to be complete and unrivalled in the specs, with nothing left on the table which the competition can leverage on to outsell its flagship (since Samsung Galaxy S III and Iphone 5 is expected in 2012 and Motorola with Google’s backing would also be releasing something extravagant).

4.            The Flagship model needs to incorporate the best of the best from the various phones HTC has released in the past and innovate thereon to improve them even further.

5.            HTC has a winner (in my view) in their Sense UI – many users (such as myself) tend to give a preference to HTC solely due to the complete and refined experience that Sense offers which is not there in the other Android Smartphones – HTC thus needs to work on this further and leverage Sense to its maximum.

6.            The recommended and non-negotiable specs of the Flagship should be something to the following effect –

a.      BUILD QUALITY – Typical HTC – superlative unibody construction – metal and plastic – something like HTC Mozart of Desire HD – not like Sensation where the entire cover including the antennae come off when opened.

b.      SCREEN – HD resolution and Super Amoled – because the Super LCD doesn’t cut it in face of Samsung’s Amoled devices.

c.      CAMERA – Top of the line with best in class still and video capture.

d.      PROCESSOR AND MEMORY – needs to be sufficiently geared up to ensure fluid working of the demanding Sense overlay – there is a lag in my Sensation XE when using Sense despite its 1.5 Ghz Dual-core processor!!!

e.      SOUND QUALITY – The sound quality especially speaker phone on HTC devices has gone to the pits in the last 2 years. I can’t believe HTC has got something so basic so wrong, unless it has been deliberate cost cutting measure (which would be stupid in my view). What is even more incredulous is the USD 300 mn invested in Beats offering, which at the end of the day only improves (questionably) the headphone audio!!! HTC needs to get its game together with respect to sound quality and go back to the days of devices like HTC Touch Pro 2 – that device had the best audio so far – and churn out something even better than that in its Flagship device in 2012.

f.       SOFTWARE – As I said earlier, HTC has a winner in Sense…it just needs to keep improvising on it and not let it degenerate. Smart improvements in Sense, including fixing some obvious glitches would do the trick. HTC needs to eliminate the lag in Sense which puts off many users and compels them to *root* their devices to get rid of Sense from the device. HTC also needs to fix in Sense, its inability to distinguish between contacts with similar numbers eg: Rick having number 1234567890 and Tom having number 2234567890.

g.      VIDEO CALLING – HTC also needs to put in native video calling in the Flagship’s dialer…I mean what’s the point of the 3G/4G phone if it doesn’t have native video calling and you have to rely on third party solutions such as Tango for the same. Samsung has got native Video calling in SGS II, so I am sure it’s not an Android issue.

So here’s hoping HTC pays some heed to this piece of earnest advice…and looking forward to the announcement of this Flagship model in 2012’s Mobile World Congress or even earlier!!!

18th December 2011