Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC Corp. said Friday that it aims to take at least a 50% share of the local phablet market with the launch of its 5.9-inch HTC One max, going head to head with Samsung Electronics Co.'s Galaxy Note series.
The new phablet -- a phone and tablet hybrid -- will help HTC become the top phablet vendor in its home market, said Jack Tong, president of HTC's operations in China and North Asia. He did not elaborate on when the company hopes to reach this target.
"The best size smartphone should be able to fit in one hand. I think phones larger than 6 inches are not that suitable for Asian consumers," Tong said at a press briefing Friday, ahead of the release of the HTC One max in Kaohsiung later in the day.
The 16GB model of the HTC One max, which was released in China and Hong Kong earlier this week, will go on sale in Taiwan on Wednesday at a price of NT$23,900 (US$815). Meanwhile, the 16GB model of Samsung's Note 3 with 3G cellular connectivity will hit local stores in November at NT$22,500 (US$767), and the 4G LTE version with the same storage capacity will be priced at NT$23,900 (US$815).
Tong said he is confident that HTC will take more than a 30% share of the Taiwan smartphone market because it is the company's home market, but he did not give a timeframe for reaching that target.
The HTC One max is a supersized version of the top-tier HTC One, featuring a 5.9-inch full-HD 1080p display, 2GB of internal memory, a massive 3,300 mAh battery, a fingerprint scanner and 4G LTE connectivity.
It was rumored that the device would pack a hefty 2.3GHz processor but HTC said it will run on an older Snapdragon 600 1.7GHz quad-core processor from Qualcomm Inc.
Samsung, the world's largest maker of handsets, launched the third generation of its popular Galaxy Note series phone in Taiwan last month, in a bid to stay ahead of new entrants to the phone-tablet hybrid device sector.
The South Korean electronics giant said it had sold about 800,000 Note series phones in Taiwan as of September, and the figure is expected to cross the 1-million mark by the end of this year.
According to market research company International Data Corp., one out of every three smartphones shipped in Taiwan during the second quarter was a phablet. Of the 2.1 million handsets shipped in Taiwan between April and June, 81% were smartphones, 37% of which were phablets, International Data Corp. said. Phablets made up only 24% of smartphone shipments during the first quarter.
Posted by www.anymobilesmartphone.co.uk
