Some reviewers felt the sophisticated aluminum construction of HTC One deserved better software. It looks like those critics may get their wish. Google Inc (GOOG) and HTC made lot of speculations come true when Android head Sundar pichai indicated a version of the HTC One with stock Android at the D11 conference.
The unlocked HTC One for AT&T and T-Mobile that comes pre-loaded with the stock version of Android Jelly bean available on the Nexus 4. It will be accessible from the Google Play store starting 26th June for $599. And will be encountering with Samsung Electronic CO Ltd’s Galaxy S4 stock edition on the same day.
With this announcement, now the users have two leading Android handsets available. With both devices running identical software, it will be enthralling to see which Google Edition Smartphone authenticates more popularity in the coming weeks.
Will There Be A Change In The Hardware?
One of the bigger question marks is will the hardware remain the same? That said, the phone will substantially be the same old HTC One hardware but this time with pure Android Open Source Project (ASOP) build, skin and pure Nexus experience.
The company is not providing any specifics just yet but there was another appealing news that, it’s currently examining a way to support early adopters of the One that may prefer the Stock Android experience over Sense.
Is It Google’s Battle Or HTC One’s?
Between HTC One and S4, people may have begun to wonder if these “Nexus experience” Phones are just another front in Google’s battle against Android fragmentation or if these kinds of phones will eventually replace the Nexus Phones which Google has been making from past few years.
Coming to HTC’s battle for a strong market share, will this plan be enough to grab the market share of Smartphone giant Samsung? Both Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition and the HTC One followed the trend of 2013’s much hyped Smartphone market with full HD displays, mind boggling features. Since the market debut of both S4 and HTC One S4 was the front runner with shipments of 10 Million units against HTC one’s 5 million units.
This move of HTC may increase the number of sales but it is going to be quite hard to bring down the market share of Samsung S4.
But that does not mean HTC is not going to make any profits, as no other phone makers are showing any interest in the Stock Android software it looks like Samsung and HTC are striking gold and are going to gulp away the Smartphone market segment share.
But it’s too soon to comment about profit, user acceptance etc as the phones are not yet released so I reckon we have to just wait and watch how users accept these phones.
