Earlier today, several top designers at HTC were arrested in Taipei under suspicion of fraudulent expense claims, as well as stealing trade secrets ahead of leaving the company to run a new mobile design firm in both Taiwan and mainland China. Five people were interrogated, with the most notable ones being Vice President of Product Design Thomas Chien, R&D director Wu Chien Hung and design team senior manager Justin Huang (who also personally sketched out the One’s design). Chien and Wu are taken into custody, whereas the others were released on bail. Their offices were also raided yesterday as part of the investigation.
HTC certainly looks like a sinking ship, doesn’t it?
Things are getting ugly.
I wonder what they think they can get out of this, anyway. Companies throwing lawsuits at other companies is one thing, but going after people individually isn’t going to do anything for them.
If you as a company are literally funding your competition because a lax of security then you really have to ask why even invest in R&D in the first place. End of the day though it shouldn’t have taken until a crisis for HTC to step up and stop the leaking – seems to be a habit for companies to wait till things get really bad before they wake up and do something about something they probably always knew existed.
As for me I’m an HTC One fanboy and pretty damn happy with it but miss steps by management doesn’t change the fact that it’ll be a tough climb for HTC even if they are delivering what I’d consider superior products to what Samsung is doing. As for the haters replying in the below threads – name calling and making assumptions as to why people purchase a product is hardly contributing constructively to the over all discussion.
HTC’s trade secret – ‘color it silver and make it aluminum, and we can sell a crapton based on its sex appeal, for shallow people looking for a fashion accessory to show off to their friends.’
If people want to pay more for the materials, then that’s up to them. Clearly you don’t, and that’s up to you.
Saying only shallow people buy HTC products is … near sighted.
I own a macbook pro, i like the design. I’ve owned HTC phones because i liked the design. Really, in a sea of android clones … design might be the only REAL differentiating factor. But maybe that’s just me.
I don’t like samsung products for example, because they feel like fisher price in my hands.
When buying a phone, these are the things i look at (in order):
– Will it run CyanogenMod?
– Design/quality
– Specs
Specs last, because they’re all stupid fast anyway.
Maybe it is just me. Clearly the market has spoken.
Edited 2013-08-31 19:59 UTC
There is nothing magical about the design of the HTC One. There’s a navigation button on the bottom that’s missing, because there’s a big f-king HTC logo that doesn’t serve a purpose. Please tell me how that is superior design? There’s an entire home screen filled with vendor bloatware that (last I checked) you can’t get rid of without a launcher. Or the huge black bar on the bottom of the screen for legacy apps. The phone itself is heavier than the S4. It has sharper edges, which makes it less comfortable to hold than the S4. Not only that, but even fanboys of the HTC One can’t provide any evidence that it’s any more durable than the S4. So it’s heavier, less comfortable in the hand, and isn’t any more durable either. Plus, it doesn’t have the SD card slot or the removable battery that the S4 has, yet people keep insisting that this piece of shit has a superior design.
People talk about the ‘boom sound’ and the camera’s low light performance, but in the end, it all comes down to one thing – aluminum. If this thing were plastic like the S4, it wouldn’t have sold 5 units. So I say, shallow
Edited 2013-08-31 22:05 UTC
He didn’t say it is “superior design.”
Maybe you aren’t aware of the fact that some people like that stuff. On the other hand, there is also a HTC One – version that ships with stock Android, just like e.g. the Nexuses, so your point is totally moot.
Oh my god, it weighs like a few GOD DAMN GRAMS more! The horror! You must have really fragile arms or something.
Matter of taste.
Not everyone cares about those. You may enjoy your own navel, but don’t make the mistake of assuming that your tastes are what everyone else should also adopt.
I’d say it’s quite fucking normal to buy stuff that looks pleasing to one’s eyes.
He inferred it, and a lot of people have stated it outright. But as I have demonstrated, it’s a bunch of BS. They don’t like the design of the HTC One – they like the aluminum.
Maybe I’m just being naive, but I could’ve swore there used to be a day where it took more than ‘sex appeal’ to sell gadgets, but I guess those days are long gone. Which goes back to my original post:
HTC’s trade secret – ‘color it silver and make it aluminum, and we can sell a crapton based on its sex appeal, for shallow people looking for a fashion accessory to show off to their friends.’
Because in the end, it’s all about the exterior, since millions of fucktards out there care more about what color a device comes in than anything else. That’s why Motorola is making the Moto X in wood; customization where it really matters to iDiots. Ultimately, I blame Apple for this nonsense, but it was HTC who brought it to the Android world… pimping the aluminum as the #1 selling point of the phone.
It was pointed out quite clearly:
All android phones are basically identical these days.
Narrow them down to the ones that can run cyanogenmod, then pick the sexiest.
Because, really, apart from how they look, there is no difference at all.
Unless you’re me, in which case you just sit there waiting for the droid 5.
LOL, you’re kidding, right? Even the stability of CM can vary from phone to phone, and from version to version. I know from experience that it doesn’t run rock solid on every phone that it supports. It is certainly not the last word in custom roms, esp since there are roms much better than CM on some phones.
That being said, there are other factors as well, such as how heavy a phone is, how comfortable it is to hold (whether you have small or large hands), the camera, the battery life, the size of storage, the quality of the screen and antenna, the durability of construction, SD slot/removable battery options, varying amounts of acessory availability (do you want a phone that doesn’t have a decent desktop dock available for it?), and a number of other factors.
Of course, none of this matters to most people, if you can get one made out of wood (or whatever) and/or have your name engraved on it.
Edited 2013-09-01 21:51 UTC
Then, narrow it to ones that work well with CM.
Everything else you listed is approximately equal for the high-end phones, apart from sd/battery removability/accessory availability.
The SD is an issue if you have a large music collection, so that’s fair, but accessories come awhile after initial launch, and are directly influenced by how well the phone sells. Which, for the mass public, depends largely upon how it looks and has been advertised, because most people seem to just want their facebook and angry birds to work.
No, i did not. I’m sorry, perhaps this is quite inconvenient to your cause.
I pick what to buy based on my own personal preferences, not yours.
As for the design vs materials. There is no separating the two. Materials are an integral part of the design. If they made a car out of lead, i would say that’s a clear design choice … wouldn’t you? It also wouldn’t be much good, due to poor design choices.
The HTC one is well designed, in large part due to the materials it’s made of. And as i’ve said before, this is one of just three criteria on which i base my next phone purchase.
Well, if you have a plastic phone, a wood phone, and an aluminum phone, and one is about as durable as the others, then I would say this design choice is quite irrelevant, esp since the HTC One has a few other design flaws (which I previously mentioned) working against it. And certainly not worth mentioning at the very top of their marketing pitch. With this design choice, they’re going after people who need a phone for a fashion accessory; the aluminum doesn’t exist for any other reason.
You seem to be unable, or unwilling, to comprehend the simple fact that people tend to simply buy what they like.
I like aluminum as a material. I like the look and feel of it. The fact that this phone is made from aluminium, and not whipped cream is a clear design choice. Whether you agree or not is only relevant to yourself, not me. I don’t like chintzy plastic. A wood phone might also be interesting, i don’t know.
Bottom line is this …
Y u so mad?
Seriously? What are you ranting about here? People buy what they like. I happen to dislike the cheap plasticky feel of samsung products.
Perhaps you should write some sort of angry letter to someone. Maybe you’ll feel better after that. Be sure to include brands like BMW and Mercedes in the list. Tell them to stop making luxury cars out of premium materials, since it doesn’t make sense. Be sure to argue the point that preference has nothing to do with it. They should make the entire dashboard out of cheap and nasty polycarbonate with some ugly oil paint over it.
Still don’t get it?
You like what you like, i like what i like. I can assure you that fashion has nothing to do with it.
Oh, I KNOW it was a design choice. It goes back to my original post on the topic:
HTC’s trade secret – ‘color it silver and make it aluminum, and we can sell a crapton based on its sex appeal, for shallow people looking for a fashion accessory to show off to their friends.’
People keep talking about the aluminum on the HTC One as if it were a premium material, but it really isn’t. Any well-made plastic phone will take a beating just as well (or more likely, as poorly) as the HTC One will. If you drop any one of them naked on a hard surface, your phone is not likely to survive without injury.
I don’t like aluminum because, having held an HTC One in one hand and an S4 in the other, the HTC One is considerably heavier. But hey, if you like believing that a shiny device must be a premium device, who am I to argue with preference? My only issue is that this sort of nonsense has become the very FIRST thing people are looking at, and they do so without caring much about any other aspect of a device. It forces vendors into focusing primarily on the cosmetics, which IMO, should be the very LAST thing to consider when paying hundreds of dollars for something like this. Like, people were mad that the S4 looked almost just like the S3. Well, why should I give a shit? It’s not like the S3 was horribly designed to begin with. Why do they need to re-invent the wheel every f–king year?
See, HTC took a page right out of Apple’s playbook. Apple is keen on shipping products with half the functionality of the competition, while at the same time brainwashing the masses into believing that because it has a shiny exterior, than it must be a premium device, and therefore worthy as a fashion accessory. And now phones are coming out with their #1 selling point that you can get it in 300 different colors. Brings my piss to a boil
Edited 2013-09-02 04:50 UTC
You don’t get it. Leather also scratches, and it requires constant maintenance. People still like leather in cars … why? Because it looks and feels nice.
Diamonds are expensive because they’re rare and shiny. Same goes for gold. Gold is pretty much useless as a material, except for the fact that it makes a very, very good conductor and it reflects heat like nothing else.
It’s not all it takes but it certainly help sales. That has always been the case and it applies to pretty much all consumer products.
lol
Though I have to say, I actually like the fact that HTC phones are heavier than their Samsung counterparts. It feels more substantial – sturdier and better quality.
Of course this is all just dumb user psychology and I wouldn’t ever base my purchase on such things. But, for me at least, it’s a nice bonus.
The problem with the brushed metal design of many HTC phones is the same as with Apple laptops and DeLorean cars: Brushed metal shows off the tiniest defects. I currently have an HTC phone on loan from a friend, and I have to hide its beautiful body in a dog-ugly rubberized case to avoid scratching or denting the finish. My trusty old phone, an HTC Arrive (kept as a backup for my wife) never was in a case and it has been scratched to hell and back.
That seems to work well with Apple products.
True, but at least Apple products have some additional uses aside from status-seeking idiots showing them off. There’s a reason you see Apple more than Android among the business and professional crowd, and it’s not because of fashion. Having used both iOS and Android as well as others, I can say that productivity apps are far more plentiful on iOS than on Android, as are productivity-oriented accessories.
LOL. You’re too funny. Ya, that’s it “productivity apps”.
Sounds familiar, kinda like:
‘color it black and make give it round corners, and we can sell a crapton based on its sex appeal, for shallow people looking for a fashion accessory to show off to their friends.’
HTC has clearly made the point to any other employees that are considering leaving – “we own the government and you will go to jail.”
What a strategy: Lets discourage employees from starting new companies!
Another instance of corporate greed having damaging effects on a country as a whole.
Not the least reason for the proliferation of new technological firms in California is the high barrier to suing employees who leave for other opportunities. In 1996 Borland of all companies actually managed to criminally charge an employee who changed jobs with theft of trade secrets. The case of course, was eventually thrown out and I believe the county prosecutor destroyed his career. The lesson is that if you see a public company suing departing employees it is a good opportunity to short the stock.
While even in California there are sometimes suits against departing employees, they are typical business lawsuits that are quickly settled.