As we draw closer to the announcement of an official release date for the upcoming HTC 8S & HTC 8X many of us want to know how much these bright and stylish smartphones, with a clean new operating system are going to cost us. On top of that what is HTC’s plan of attack against its competitors.
We have shown you several leaked documents with a range of prices from $99 via Best Buy to $199 through Verizon and release dates around November 12th. At this point, we just have to wait until next week’s official launch party hosted by Microsoft to get the most reliable information to go by and possibly an open window to pre-order the HTC 8S & HTC 8X.
Official pricing and release dates aside, we are curious to know what HTC is going to do to get the edge over the handful of OEM’s bringing their own Windows Phone 8 handsets this November. Some readers might be aware that Nokia and Microsoft have a special partnership announced last year to offer an “unrivalled” selection of Windows Phone products but HTC wants to put a shadow over that spotlight by offering lower priced handsets and is bringing their flagship Windows Phone devices to multiple carriers in the United States. Nokia’s Lumia 920 is headed to AT&T exclusively so HTC and other manufacturers will have made a dent selling WP8 phones on other carriers before Nokia gets a chance.
Cellular carriers in the US offer smartphones with 2 year contract obligations at prices much lower than the suggested retail price, but for those of you that do not like contracts the full retail price for an HTC phone is projected to be lower than the price tag Nokia’s phones are going to run. Samsung also appears to list the price of their upcoming WP8 devices, but HTC might be a few bucks lower than Samsung too. This is according to numbers gathered by DigiTimes.
An unlocked HTC’s WP8 X is likely to be available for US$500-600 compared to US$700 for Samsung’s Ativ S, while Nokia’s unlocked Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 are expected to range from US$600-800, estimated the sources.
Could the introduction of Windows Phone 8 be the page HTC needed to turn in order to get their numbers back on the rise? HTC has been on a declining slide after going through a six quarter streak of record breaking sales.
