HTC bows gracefully out of the tablet market, still keeping an eye on it Though

By all accounts, HTC is a great manufacturer. Their numbers have slipped a bit and the competing markets have become, well, more increasingly competitive. They started out with Android with a bang, but Samsung has since stepped in and dominated the scene. HTC’s current market holdings could be from flooding the market with devices last year, not having a true  flagship device that is the same across the boards or because people were over Sense. A lot of factor play into business and how well a smartphone manufacturer does.  This isn’t about phones though, this is about tablets. Even though most of the above rings true in that market as well.

HTC has officially come out and said that they have no plans to re-enter into the tablet market in the U.S. right now. So don’t expect a 7 or 10 inch slate coming out of their factories anytime soon. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t building and testing various ideas and software. There are sure to be some leaks of different tablets from HTC floating around from time to time. We all know they had two tablets out a while back, the Flyer and the Jetstream. Both met ‘expectations’ but were never front-runners in the market. With the likes of the $200 Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire HD, it is tricky for major manufacturers to compete on a grand scale without going in the hole to do so. If HTC came out with something had comparable specs to either device, it would end up costing much more and turn people away. Add in the fact that most U.S. carriers aren’t selling tablets at subsidized prices anymore and you are looking loss across the boards.

“We’re watching that market [tablets] very, very closely. It was a great learning experience for us, and they definitely met expectations…We’re very much not set on one strategy over another”. – Jeff Gordon, HTC’s global online communications manager.

As Greg said in a comment on another post, all these low-priced tablets are great for consumers, but not for manufacturers. We love Google and Amazon for what they have done, making a great tablet that is affordable. At the same time though, it is inevitable that hardware manufacturers can’t absorb the costs that those guys do. He predicted 5 years, but it looks like it will be much sooner for some. Let’s hope that HTC sees an in into the tablet market sometime soon, we would love to see something top-notch from them again.

Source:  FierceWireless