HTC, the once-impressive Android mobile, has a great tablet to accompany its strange metaverse-focused Desire 22 Pro.
The latest A101 is an Android tablet with a 10.1-inch display, entry-level specification, and a layout honestly out of the middle of the last decade.
According to the Wayback Machine, the spotted device appears to have been quietly announced last month and is aimed at the African market. It follows the A100 tablet launched in Russia last year with an equivalent non-reaction.
Given that the tablet seems to be marketed exclusively at emerging markets, we don’t want to be too snarky about its specifications or design. But it’s still just plain odd to see HTC — makers of the first-ever Android mobile and a company that Google once empowered to make a Nexus-branded tablet — producing forgettable devices like this. The A101 even heads 2020’s Android 11 out of the box, rather than Android 12 or the big-screen immersed Android 12L.
Internally, the HTC tablet is powered by a Unisoc T618 processor, with 128GB of storage and 8GB of RAM, expandable thru microSD. It’s got a couple of cameras on its rear, a primary 16-megapixel camera with a 2-megapixel ultrawide. In addition, there’s a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, a 3.5mm headphone jack, 7,000mAh battery, and face support unlock on both models.
It is a company that once ran toe to toe with the parallels of Samsung in the flagship Android demand. But now, in 2022, it can quietly expose a comprehensively unimpressive tablet on its website and have most of the world not catch it until days later.
Interbrand’s 2011 Best Global Brands rankings listed HTC at #98 and valued it at $3.6 billion. Established by researcher Canalys in Q3 2011, HTC Corporation became the most extensive mobile trader in the U.S. with a 24% market share, ahead of Samsung’s 21 percent, Apple’s 20 percent, and BlackBerry’s 9 percent. In addition, HTC Corporation made different models for each operator.
In early 2012, HTC lost much of this U.S. market share due to increased competition from Apple and Samsung. As a result, HTC only accounted for 9.3% of the US smartphone demand as of February 2013. Chief Executive Peter Chou had advised executives that he would step down if the corporation’s newest flagship phone, the 2013 HTC One, had fallen to generate impressive sales results.
HTC’s first quarter outcomes for 2013 revealed its year-over-year profit decrease by 98.1%, making it the smallest-ever profit for the business—the indecision of the launch of the HTC One was mentioned as one of the factors. In June 2012, HTC shifted its headquarters from Taoyuan City to Xindian District, New Taipei City. HTC launched its smartphones in Myanmar on 14 January 2013.
The HTC One was released mid-2013 and subsequently won various industry awards in the best smartphone and design categories. Still, global sales of the HTC One were lower than those for Samsung’s Galaxy S4 flagship handset. As a result, HTC recorded its first quarterly loss in early October 2013: a deficit of just under NT$3 billion. HTC identified marketing problems as the primary reason for its comparative performance, a factor that the company had previously cited.
In 2013, Microsoft was in negotiations to purchase HTC. However, it was revealed in 2018 by Risto Siilasmaa, chairman of Nokia, in an interview with the Helsingin Sanomat. Microsoft would eventually buy Nokia’s mobile phone business that year.
Meanwhile, the smartphone innovation talent HTC sold off to Google in early 2018 has progressed from pillar to pillar over the last few years. While the Pixel 4 is now considered a misstep, the Pixel 5 was a very competent mid-range handset, and the Pixel 6 was a competitive flagship. In contrast, it’s getting tougher to describe what HTC’s remaining smartphone division is performing beyond vague buzzwords such as the “metaverse.”
HTC Corporation is a Taiwanese consumer electronics company headquartered in Xindian District, New Taipei City, Taiwan. Founded in 1997, HTC began as an original design and equipment manufacturer, designing and manufacturing laptop computers.
After initially making smartphones based primarily on Windows Mobile, HTC became a co-founding member of the Open Handset Alliance, a group of handset manufacturers and mobile network operators dedicated to developing the Android operating system. As a result, the HTC Dream was the first phone on the market to run Android.
Although initially successful as a smartphone vendor, competition from Meizu, among others, diluted its market share, which reached just 7.2% by April 2015, and the company has experienced consecutive net losses. In 2016, HTC began to diversify its business beyond smartphones, having partnered with Valve to produce a virtual reality platform called HTC Vive. In addition, after having collaborated with Google on its Pixel smartphone, HTC sold roughly half of its design and research talent and non-exclusive rights to smartphone-related intellectual property to Google in 2017 for US$1.1 billion.
In 2010, it worked with Google to build mobile phones running Google’s Android mobile OS, such as the Nexus One.
It grew exponentially after Microsoft chose it as a hardware platform development partner for the now defunct Windows Mobile operating system.
HTC invested strongly in research and development, accounting for a quarter of its employees. The company’s North American headquarters are located in Bellevue, Washington. In addition, HTC runs a software design office in Seattle where it designs the interface for its phones. In 2011, HTC also opened a research and development office in Durham, North Carolina, a location the company chose over Seattle and Atlanta to focus on multiple areas of wireless technology.