In addition, the growing Chinese market is definitely a tempting nut to crack. With the growth away from a largely “budget” handset market, China is starting to demand more mid and high quality devices be accessible to them. This is even showcased by companies operating inside China such as Huawei which has emerged on the global market with a bang with the release of their Ascend P6. Apple is also hoping on the bandwagon of other larger manufacturers with their rumored mid-class iPhone 5C.
As of right now. HTC is currently struggling in quite a few markets and even a recent Canalys report in the Chinese market does not bode well for HTC, listing them under the “Other” category. As such, even the foray into the Chinese market with a unique OS is a huge gamble for the Taiwanese company and may be HTC’s attempt of gaining even just a little bit of a foothold into this emerging dragon market.
“The project is seen by HTC insiders partly as an effort to forge political and business ties in China, since third-party operating systems have little chance of actually competing against the dominance of Android and Apple’s iOS. In the second quarter, Android held 79% of the global smartphone market, while iOS snagged 14.2%, according to market research firm Gartner. No other operating system captured more than 4%.”
Either way, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. With their constant stream of failures as of late, maybe China will actually be a saving grace for HTC?