With HTC’s recent disappointing results and stories of ASUS having thoughts of buying over the troubled company, the news has caused quite a stir in the industry and heated discussion among the tech media community. Today, we have certainly come to a point to agree that almost any company could make a smartphone, they can easily come with the highest resolution displays, impressively curated build material and most importantly, they are no longer expensive, such examples include Xiaomi and OnePlus.
HTC makes great smartphones, they have always been a heroic smartphone brand in my heart and I can simply refer the company as the Apple of Android and Windows Mobile (Windows Phone was named back then). ASUS, a brand that makes one of the world’s best PC motherboards and notebooks have diversified its business so well that out of the blue, the company’s ZenFone handsets topped the charts in certain Asian countries. When I think of the possibility of these two companies merging together, I have excited thoughts about it and believed that both of them could stand a chance to show the world on what smartphone they could produce together and it is even possible to pose a serious threat to big boys like Samsung and Apple.
HTC makes great user experience and hardware, ASUS knows how to market the products well.
To be fair, both HTC and ASUS make great smartphones these days, however the main problem between the two is pretty obvious – HTC does not know how to market its products well but knows how to create a near flawless and unique user experience, ASUS prices its Zenfones right with partial support from Intel however ZenUI is a rip off of many other smartphone’s great software features and requires some amount of hardware power to run well. In a nutshell, these two brands have the best abilities that each other does not have, while they don’t necessarily need to end in the Nokia and Microsoft way but the duo could actually work to satisfy different segment of consumers in terms of pricing strategy, marketing and technology sharing.
Good artists copy, great artists steal! Spot the difference!
Lets not forget the old HTC was once an ODM (original design manufacturer) and they make extremely iconic phones back then – the O2 XDA II, Dopod 838 Pro, Sony Ericcson Xperia X1 and currently, the iconic HTC One handset with a full metal body and awesome front facing BoomSound speakers, the company also once pioneered the mobile industry with many firsts, for instance, the first Android smartphone (Google G1), the first Android smartphone with WiMAX (HTC Evo 4G) and many more. On the other hand, ASUS has had a history of failing secure a long term partnership with Garmin back in the WinMo days, which is due to the lack of software innovation, hardware improvement and support.
Both companies have had their ups and downs in the past however at this point of time, ASUS is stealing HTC’s spotlight even in its home land, the new Zenfone 2 is undeniably one of the most powerful smartphones in the market and it didn’t look as bad as the company’s recent One M9 smartphone, the Zenfone 2 is priced almost half of the One M9’s value despite of its slightly inferior build quality.
Both HTC and ASUS could actually help each other when they are together, ASUS could actually serve the entry level market while HTC continue to focus its efforts in the more premium smartphone market while extending its ecosystem to ASUS, a strong alliance between the two companies could actually mean more great quality devices for consumers to choose from, and eventually help HTC out of its financial woes. According to some of our inside sources, ASUS does nick a couple of lead designers from HTC when it was in trouble back, hence contributing to the company’s success, isn’t it time that HTC should consider lowering down its ego and just have a friendly and strategic alliance with ASUS? Your comments are welcome.
