HTC’s third quarter numbers are in and they’re absolutely gorgeous. The Taiwanese firm scored $360 million in profits, double what they did during the same time last year. With devices like the Desire and the Legend, never mind the soon to launch Desire HD and Desire Z, plus whatever else they’ll announce between now and the end of the year, is it any surprise that they’re kicking ass and taking names?
“Investors are comfortable with HTC’s status in the Android market,” said Steven Tseng, an analyst at RBS in Taipei. “HTC will keep a stable position, even if it is not a leader in the sector.” Wait a minute, if HTC isn’t the leader in terms of Android devices, then who is it? It can’t be LG, and most certainly not Sony Ericsson, so is it Samsung? There’s always Motorola, but their Android devices don’t really take off in places other than America. They’re quite … how should I put this nicely? Ugly. Which isn’t to say they’re slow or impractical, they just need a touch of Jonathan Ive.
What HTC devices are you looking forward to be announced in February at Mobile World Congress? This February, what seems like ages ago, the Nexus One (later known as the Desire) came out. Think we’ll see something that has double the cores, double the memory, double the screen resolution, and double the price tag? Qualcomm’s got the chips, Samsung’s got the screens, now we just need Google to come out with Android 2.3 or 3.0 or whatever they’re going to call the next version of their operating system, and HTC to put it all together into a nice and tidy package.
Think HTC would do better or worse if they decided to scrap Sense and stick with stock Android builds? I can’t say since I’ve only had 1 Android device, the Nexus One, so I don’t really know if Sense is that much of an improvement. What I do know however is that my friends in the industry don’t seem to like the tweaks that companies are throwing on top of Google’s operating system in hopes of making them more useful.