Informal, sincere, chit-chat with Peter Chou, CEO of HTC
October 01, 2007 [General] | By Edward J. R.
Today HTC has announced 4 new devices: HTC Touch Dual (3G phone with touch-screen and slide-out keypad/keyboard - the main attraction of the event), HTC Shift (UMPC with 3G), HTC P6500 (phone for enterprises with bar code reader and touch-screen), HTC S730 (3G phone without touch-screen but with QWERTY keyboard).
We will yet publish stories about this event: a photo report with descriptions, and a video report (full, unedited, also in DVD quality) but it is worth mentioning, that after an official part of the event (i.e. speeches + public FAQ session) we have been chatting with various people, including: James Blamey from Microsoft, Jason Langridge from Microsoft, Jason Gordon from HTC USA, Julian Hope from HTC UK, John Wang from HTC Taiwan, Florian Seiche from HTC Europe, and, last not least, Peter Chou (CEO of HTC).
While chatting with Jason Gordon - a very competent guy, who previously was working for Microsoft itself (in Windows Mobile area!), for Motorola (in Motorola Q area!) and now works for HTC USA - we have encountered Peter Chou himself and, encouraged by Jason Gordon, chatted about some vital issues sincerely.
While official stuff is pretty much widely known, it may be extremely interesting what Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, has said informally (but not off-the-record, not under NDA):
- Internet browser experience
msmobiles.com: we have mentioned that John Wang (boss of MAGIC Labs division in HTC that invented HTC TouchFLO and other innovative technologies) has demonstrated to us the new image viewing application from HTC - with new gestures for zooming-in, zooming-out and rotating the images (stay tuned for video recording of this demonstration!) but it would be extremely useful to have similar functionality also with Internet browser in Windows Mobile. We also mentioned that Picsel company is offering Internet browser for full web browsing for Windows Mobile, sold among others to Samsung.
Peter Chou: HTC will have very good browser for full web browsing next year.
- the need to have HTC Touch and HTC Touch Dual phones also in pink color
msmobiles.com: women, girls and some men very much like mobile phones in pink color and having HTC Touch phones in this color could increase sales significantly. Otherwise it may be difficult to purchase HTC Touch as a gift, for example for Christmas, for example: for female members of one's family.
Peter Chou: internally HTC already has HTC Touch series phones in pink color (real pink and not some light shade of pink) and they will be available in future, however not before Christmas 2007.
- phones from HTC with 2 things in one device: touch-screen and QWERTY keyboard for single-handed usage
msmobiles.com: on request of Jason Gordon we have shown to Peter Chou the phone that our reporter was using as his primary one. Surprise, surprise (!) although also powered by Window Mobile it was not a HTC-manufactured phone but a phone manufactured by other company and featuring QWERTY keyboard for single-handed usage and a touch-screen in one device. We have mentioned that for many people having phone with these 2 features in one device is more important than having 3G in a phone, particularly because nowadays many people use HSDPA cards in their notebooks for Internet browsing. Also particularly because nowadays, many people use WiFi instead of 3G for Internet browsing anyway.
Peter Chou: when he started playing with the phone of our reporter, he was thinking that it has no touch-screen (HTC is making phones with such keyboards for single-handed usage but without touch-screen - that could be the reason). He mentioned that HTC phones with QWERTY-keyboard for single-handed usage and with touch-screen in one device are not coming any time soon from HTC because HTC is offering many other types, including the ones with slide-out QWERTY keyboard (for double-handed usage) and touch-screen.
- improved virtual keyboards for HTC Touch Dual (built-in) and for HTC Touch (will be available as download)
msmobiles.com: indeed a big improvement for people who want to use fingers instead of stylus but they are not good enough yet. Anyway this is not a problem at all because excellent freeware keyboard for finger-based typing is available at www.pocketcm.com/keyboard.php
Peter Chou: HTC offers variety of devices, including ones with physical keyboard [so anybody can select a device that suits him/her the most].
- HTC Shift - the UMPC with Windows Vista, does it have Windows Mobile or not?
msmobiles.com: it would be great to have ability to run Windows Mobile applications and thus have much longer battery life than in Windows Vista mode.
Peter Chou: HTC Shift doesn't have Windows Mobile but just a push-email application to read and write emails also when Windows Vista part of HTC Shift is switched off. Interstingly this push e-mail application can view attachments with Office documents but these documents can be viewed only (cannot be edited as it is in full Windows Mobile and in Windows XP and Vista). HTC Shift has 2 environments: Windows Vista and push-email application "only".
- video recording in Windows Mobile phones from HTC
msmobiles.com: nowadays 640x480 pixels with 30 fps (frames per second) is a de facto standard for popular, mass market, video recording in camcorders, digital still cameras, other mobile phones and for Internet-based social networking services (YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, FaceBook). Windows Mobile phones made by HTC should support this standard.
Peter Chou: HTC Touch Dual can record decent videos. As a proof he demonstrated video of his 2 young daughters playing with toys. The video was quite decent but it was in lower resolution than above mentioned standard and it was shaking a bit. He implied that one cannot satisfy all requests of all users.
- overall progress in HTC made phones
msmobiles.com: clearly, step-by-step but continuously and in a solid way, HTC is bringing new innovations and particulary this image viewing application with gestures for zooming, and new phones, proves it.
Peter Chou: today HTC presented 4 devices for fourth quarter of 2007. However HTC has in pipeline many other devices. HTC keeps innovating and releases new and new devices.
Conclusion: clearly sometimes it is more important to get the gist of situation rather then reading dry press releases and official announcements. Since we are 100% committed to Windows Mobile but on the other hand we understand limitations of the situation (not every company can throw away hundreds of millions of dollars into marketing of just one phone - as Nokia does) a report from such informal, open and sincere chit-chat, obviously can be quite useful to potential customers! ... and it shows that HTC has customer satisfaction at heart.
Please note: tomorrow similar HTC press event takes place, but in city of Munich in Germany, where it will be announced that O2 Germany will be selling HTC Touch Dual.
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