MWC: Apps won’t stand-alone for long, says HTC

Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, said in his keynote at the Mobile World Congress this week that HTC’s focus in the mobile application ecosystem is in integration. He believes that today’s applications give a stand-alone user experience and instead need to be better integrated with the software and hardware solutions used by device vendors.

Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, used his keynote address at the Mobile World Congress yesterday to state that the company’s focus in the mobile app ecosystem is in integrating the best products and services with its other hardware and software solutions, in order to deliver a more rounded solution for customers.

Chou noted that ‚apps today are a stand-alone silo experience,‚ rather than being integrated with the service portfolio of operators or the hardware and software solutions used by device vendors. In order to address this, ‚we try to listen to our customers to see which are the best, and we integrate these apps to deliver a holistic user experience.‚

As an example, Chou highlighted HTC’s introduction of several devices with deep Facebook integration, with a dedicated button intended to enable easier information sharing. Rather than launching the Facebook app, the button provides access to Facebook functionality integrated with other apps, for example enabling customers to share images from the camera app, share details of the music they are listening to from the music app, or sending messages via the Facebook messaging system.

The HTC CEO also underlined what has become something of a key theme among the apps sessions at the event this week: that the mobile app business is not a simple numbers game. ‚A lot of apps are not really meaningful. You have apps that are really great apps, those are the ones that are most important,‚ he said.

Chou also noted the potential to build on its HTCSense.com service, which currently provides device data management and content back-up. ‚This platform can also be a good groundwork for integrating other services, for example music or gaming,‚ he said.

HTC has recently made several investments to improve its proposition for delivering content to subscribers. It has acquired Saffron Digital, a content distribution platform company, and invested in OnLive, a cloud-based gaming company. However, Chou stated that the company is not intending to build a proposition that will compete with its partners such as Google or Microsoft, which provide the operating systems which power its devices. ‚We try to be a good citizen, and support the whole ecosystem.‚

Chou also noted that the barriers between ‚applications‚ and ‚services‚ will become increasingly blurred in the coming years, with the two blurring to deliver a ‚whole user experience.‚ This will provide an opportunity for operators, who are ‚playing a critical role, because [they] want to create more ARPU and more services to satisfy their customers.‚

‚We think that the app development ecosystem will still be evolving for the next five years. This is an opportunity for all of us in that,‚ he concluded.

– Story courtesy of Mobile World Congress Show Daily