HTC is planning to bring a completely new tablet in 2012 which will not be a run of the mill product.
“Tablet is a market we would like to try and test, to see whether we can make ourselves stand out and prevent a me-too product,” the chief executive officer of HTC, Peter Chou, was quoted as saying by Reuters. However, he asserted that HTC is focused on the smartphones currently.
HTC has two tablets in the market as of now – Flyer and Jetstream. HTC Flyer was the first tablet from the company which was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress 2011. It drew attention of lot of users for its stylus.
HTC Jetstream was the first 4G LTE enabled tablet which runs on the Android 3.0 Honeycomb. The device packs a punch with its hardware though the device is extremely costly at $700 (Rs 35,000).
Considering Chou’s comment, one could expect that HTC would definitely bring something innovative. But, till now most of the companies have struggled to make a mark in the tablet space. Only, Apple with its iPad has achieved a lot success.
Apple somehow faced a competition from Amazon’s Kindle Fire which had a slightly stripped down device but was priced at $199 (Rs 10,000). Kindle Fire is believed to be heavily subsidized which will make money later through content sales through Amazon e-commerce business.
Meanwhile, it is also believed there would be no low end smartphones from HTC in the meantime. At best, things are hazy right now and are likely to be clearer with future statements from the same company.