Jeff Blagdon from The Verge recently had the opportunity to sit down with HTC’s Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera and talk about design, Windows phone and HTC’s product strategy. We’ve pulled out some of Kouji Kodera’s best quotes to give you an idea of what HTC’s mindset is right now and what we can expect from the company in the near future.
It’s no secret that HTC has been pushing out new devices faster than most consumers can keep up with them. Fortunately, that strategy may soon be coming to an end as HTC shifts from trying to be first to market with devices with all the latest and greatest specs and focuses more on implementation.
“HTC’s product strategy is changing. In the past, the company was more about ‘let’s implement the latest and greatest spec faster than anyone else.'”
“less product, more exposure on those… and bringing some real differentiated factors to the market, rather than just bringing many new products.”
When asked about HTC’s styling of the HTC 8X and 8S and the similarities between HTC’s Windows phone 8 lineup and what Nokia has brought to market, Kouji Kodera says he really does not get what everyone is talking about.
“If you look into the fashion industry, there are colors of the season all the time. In the fashion industry, those are decided two or three years in advance of those materials arriving to the market… and for those designers who get that information, it’s coming from a common source. There are three influential color designers in the world, all in France and Europe. That’s only three firms. So the source is very limited and everybody goes there, regardless of industry.”
Branching out with new Windows Phone 8 devices may be a natural move for HTC since the company built its foundations on Microsoft’s mobile platform, but it’s tough to see what the payoff is if HTC is looking to dwindle its handset offerings and Microsoft charges a licensing fee for the OS. Kouji counters that argument with the simple fact that Microsoft is doing everything it can to promote Windows Phone 8 with its own money.
“The biggest difference is that Google doesn’t do any advertising for Android, while Microsoft pays to promote Windows Phone on its own. So you can’t compare categorically just on the basis of license fees… the bigger factor is how strong the products are and whether or not people will buy them.”
While Apple has had huge success in the tablet space, HTC’s offerings didn’t really catch on. The company does not have any plans to launch a tablet in the near future, but that doesn’t mean they are giving up on the segment.
“We’re interested. We’ve made a lot of concepts, but we haven’t been able to find something that is really strong yet. Actually, I think we canceled six or seven concepts since [the Flyer and Jetstream]. What we decided is we will really focus on our product, we will re-do it as many times as we need until we get a concept and a product that we feel comfortable with.”
The one questions many of you asked when the HTC J Butterfly and Droid DNA was unveiled was “how much bigger will phones get?” Fortunately, Kouji Kodera thinks that a 5-inch display with a 1080p resolution is the limit with the technology advances being pushed down to smaller and smaller displays.
“We’re going to see smaller displays that are capable of that resolution, so pixel density is going to keep going up.”
Those are the highlights, but we highly suggest you check out the full interview over on The Verge.
Source: The Verge
