HTC may be looking to get an application store in the works according to a recent rumor. The Taiwanese company is apparently hiring new staff to get the online store going, where the manufacturer will be selling e-Books and applications. HTC has already killed it this year with so many Android devices that I’ve lost count – and today its Windows Phone 7 devices hit stores nationwide. Could this be an addition to the HTCSense.com portal that was launched about a month ago?
The Financial Times reports:
One person with knowledge of the situation said HTC was hiring content editors for a planned online HTC store for its phones, including for e-books and magazines as well as for applications. The team is understood initially to include a small number of staff based in Taiwan, with plans to expand to 100 people in different locations around the world.
HTC said it is “growing very fast and we are hiring for a variety of positions including marketers, developers, technical writers and many others. We are always exploring new areas we can add value to our customers but we can’t comment on our future plans.”Peter Chou, chief executive of HTC, had previously said he saw “little value” in HTC running its own application store. But he has also said that it was no longer enough for HTC to simply customise the standard Android user interface with its own “skin”: “It is not enough to be skin-deep. We need to go bone-deep.”
I’m looking forward to whatever the manufacturer has in store, especially since I’ve always loved its hardware and the Sense software that it has layered over Windows Mobile and Android, making them so much more usable. I’d venture to say that a move into this new space will deliver products nothing short of expectations. Fingers crossed.
[Via: FT]