The head of HTC's new Creative Labs, Drew Bamford
In the face of an increasingly competitive market, smartphone maker HTC has begun selling its unique software products to other Android devices in order to boost revenue.
In the face of growing losses and its Asian competitors gathering pace in the smartphone market, the Taiwanese-based manufacturer has come to the decision to expand the business outside of hardware and into software and apps.
According to Re/code, HTC has now set up an entirely separate business from the hardware end and has established an office, known as the HTC Creative Labs, consisting of 260 people to strategise its new business plan.
And it would appear HTC is not holding back with getting its products out to market as soon as possible, as it reportedly expects to launch its first product by the end of this week.
Known as Zoe, the app for editing and recording short videos will become available on all modern Android devices, including many of its biggest rivals.
It is believed HTC is pinning a lot of its hopes on Zoe to launch the division as a place to seamlessly knit images and video taken by a user into clips of upwards of 30 seconds, and that Zoe will become just as popular as similar apps, such as Vine, Instagram and Snapchat.
The head of this new division, Drew Bamford, said the company has a number of other products that will be revealed in the coming months, and was surprised at HTC’s willingness to open up its software.
“I expected there to be a lot more resistance to shipping things that previously were considered HTC experiences. Honestly, there hasn’t been that much argument,” Bamford said.
