HTC delays smartwatch launch as it searches for a better design

By Trevor Mogg October 8, 2014

htc delays smartwatch launch as it searches for better design via evleaks — Image used with permission by copyright holder

As tech firms around the world scramble to join the smartwatch revolution, rushing out devices to avoid getting left behind, HTC has decided to take a step back till it can come up with a design that it thinks consumers will really go for.

Jason Mackenzie of HTC Americas told Re/code this week that the company had planned to have a smartwatch on the market around now, but “it ended up just not being ready.”

That’s certainly an honest admission, and while early entry into an exploding market may be deemed an absolute must by many companies, Drew Bamford of HTC’s Creative Labs team is firm in his belief that no manufacturer has yet come up with a killer smartwatch design.

“We’ve seen a lot of general purpose wearables come to market,” Bamford told Re/code. “There’s not a strong reason to wear one every day. When we come to market with our product we want to make sure the product has a strong point of view and there is a really compelling reason to strap it on your wrist.”

He added, “We think the strategy we are working on will get us there, but we want to take our time and get it right. We honestly don’t think anyone has gotten it right.”

The Taiwan-based company revealed back in March that it was working on a “wearable computing product,” which most commentators took to be a smartwatch. A few months later, Evan Blass of @evleaks fame revealed an artist’s rendition (shown above) of HTC’s expected Android smartwatch that he promised was a “100 percent faithful reproduction.”

Whether that was the watch that HTC dumped in favor of more research, or simply the work of someone that enjoys dreaming up smartwatch designs, we’ll probably never know. But claiming there’s currently nothing on the smartwatch market to get excited about certainly puts pressure on HTC to come up with something special when it does eventually enter the space.

The company said it hopes to be in a position to offer further details related to its wearables strategy in early 2015.

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Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

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