Mobile World Congress (MWC 2016) has come and gone, and many were expecting Taiwanese manufacturer HTC to announce its Android Wear smartwatch. Although the company defied expectations, there’s every reason to suspect that HTC is planning a smartwatch and that announcing it and bringing it to market is a matter of “when,” not “if.” In an interview with HTC, Chief Executive Officer (CFO) Cheryl Wang said that “When HTC comes out with a smartwatch, we will turn the industry on its head.” Notice that Wang did not deny HTC would make a smartwatch, and she did not deny that HTC would ever bring a smartwatch to market. When is the key word here, not if.
We’ve already told you what we think HTC must do to turn heads (see here and here), and, whatever the manufacturer chooses to do must do more than make people “ooohhhh” and “aaahhh” because of the smartwatch’s design. We’ve seen HTC’s former CEO get up a number of times and talk about how HTC made “the most beautiful smartphone,” only to see companies like Samsung and LG outsell HTC in the Android market on a regular basis. With phones becoming more and more beautiful each year, there’s only so much cosmetic work that can be done to make a smartphone beautiful. The same can be said for a smartwatch.
