TechDomino
Is an HTC One Google Edition inevitable? The HTC One made a pretty good entrance in the smartphone market, but Samsung seems to be taking back the spotlight with the recently announced Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition. For this reason alone, but also for many others, it stands to reason that HTC should make a Google Edition version of their HTC One.
When the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition was announced at Google I/O, some HTC officials gave some hints that you might want to wait for later this year, instead of getting that Samsung device. Since then they haven’t really said much, but there have been rumors from other sources that HTC is working on a stock Android HTC One phone.
If this is true, it could be great news for HTC’s sales, but it depends on how fast this device will arrive. I don’t think there will be so many people interested in the same device if it arrives 6 months later, when there will already be other flagships to tempt customers.
An HTC One Google Edition that will arrive say in the next couple of months, could boost HTC’s image in the press and with investors, and this will reflect on their sales, too. Even if the phone itself won’t sell that well, the media frenzy around it should put HTC back in the mind of many hard core Android fans and in the mind of the general Android community, too. This will win them fans, fans that will be willing to fight for them and support them later when they launch other devices, too.
I think this aspect is very underrated usually, and I think it’s also one of the main reasons why HTC One is doing this well so far. Of course, the device needs to be good, too, but without the Android community’s support, I doubt it would’ve sold 5 million units so far. It would probably been several times less, just like with the HTC One X last year, in the same time period. The same community has made LG look good again, because of the Nexus 4, and it was also what made the Kindle Fire popular (and when the community stopped caring, you barely heard anything about the Kindle Fire anymore).
So HTC should definitely not underestimate how important it is to make an HTC One Google Edition. However, I think they probably won’t have a huge success with it this year, because they weren’t really planning to launch one this year, until they saw the attention the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition was getting, and if they do launch it, it will arrive late. But at least it should prepare them for the next-gen HTC One next year, when they should release the Google Edition immediately.
