It’s been a pretty great year for HTC so far in terms of devices. In fact, the HTC One M8 is still our favourite handset of 2014. Unfortunately, it seems like the one thing it definitely won’t be releasing this year is a great smartwatch to go with it.
HTC’s Head of Americas Jason Mackenzie (pictured, left) told Re/code this week, “We had originally planned to have a wearable launch in this time frame. It ended up just not being ready.”
A fair enough explanation we’re sure you’ll agree. It’s not as if any one Android Wear device is in real danger of dominating the market this year anyway. At least, that’s what HTC thinks: “We honestly don’t think anyone has gotten it right,” says HTC’s Creative Labs Team head Drew Bamford.
“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.”
Strong words indeed. They better make sure when they do release an HTC watch to market that it was worth the wait.
As sensible as HTC’s rationale is, it’s actually a little surprising that the device has been delayed for so long. All the way back in July the now-retired Twitter leaker @evleaks posted an image as well as a list of specifications of the as-yet-unnamed smartwatch. Perhaps HTC has seen the lukewarm reaction the public has had to Android Wear so far and is determined to make a device that genuinely gets it all right. We can only hope.
