FollowWhen HTC launched its brand new flagship the HTC One last week we were excited about the prospect of further device launches as the year goes on. The fantastic and accomplished HTC One ties up the company at the high-end of the smartphone market but we hoped to see a bunch of other devices packing the One branding.
Sadly HTC has today poured a bucket of cold water over our raging fire of expectation by saying that the HTC One will be its ONLY handset launch of this year. It seems the Taiwanese company is going the way of Apple and releasing on a yearly basis, and we thought the One was only similar to the iPhone in terms of looks.
This proves a change of tact from the company that has typically gone with multiple device launches per year carrying the same branding. For example we had several smartphones under the One branding, the One X, One S, and One V. HTC UK’s head Phil Robertson confirmed to Omio that the HTC One would be the only, well one to be released this year, “We just said, let’s just create one flagship device for this year.”
Of course that does not mean we will not see anything else from HTC in 2013, but any flagship variations of the One, forget about it. HTC has usually been a company that has a few flagship devices released each year, and in fact only Apple really delivers just one per year (Although the split-year S model iPhones could be described as new devices). HTC is now following Apple’s lead with the HTC One, but we do suspect we will see some mid-range offerings at some point under a different branding.
Of course, the company has made it clear that we can expect some Windows based smartphones during this year, so we will at least be getting some new HTC’s to play with.
