HTC seem to be embracing the wide developer community, utilising their devices. With the recent news that HTC will be delivering their Android devices with the bootloader unlocked, removing a huge obstacle, for Android developers with HTC Handsets, we start to see a change in attitude, that recognises the open source nature of Google’s mobile phone OS. HTC may also be recognising that, what they do can be improved upon, and that crowd sourcing software development like this may be advantageous to the company in the long run. When Peter Chou, CEO of HTC tweeted “There has been overwhelmingly customer feedback that people want access to open boot loaders on HTC phones. I want you to know that we’ve listened. Today, I’m confirming we will no longer be locking the boot loaders on our devices. Thanks for your passion, support and patience”, most people thought that would be the end of the opening up process. It seems though that HTC are really upping the ante, and escalating their commitment to open source software, releasing a Software Developer Kit for their trademark Sense UI.
“HTC is a company of engineers excited about the possibilities of the mobile space with the goal of fostering choice through innovation,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC. “We believe in openness and the power of imagination to create that innovation and are excited that HTCdev will extend new tools to mobile developers, helping them create the next wave of mobile experiences.”
HTC is making a commitment to developers everywhere, and also issuing a challenge, can you make our software better. They have released a toolkit that they have pledged to maintain and update, for the latest Sense 3.0 UI software, providing all relevant API’s and code samples. These sorts of concessions, and software releases, may seem to some to be a backdown on security policy by HTC, but if you think about it a bit, it’s free outsourcing at it’s best. By opening up it’s software in this way HTC is actually making it easier for non HTC developers to improve core UI and software elements in their devices. Which in the long run they will be able to dissect and include in later builds of the UI. Truly embracing the open source philosophy, is a win/win scenario for HTC and users of their Android devices. While Android id the favour of the month, it will be interesting to see if HTC will do something similar for Windows Mobile, Windows Phone and devices running their own OS, Brew MP.
