Cliff Maldonado, analyst at BayStreet Research, has claimed that HTC will not launch its next flagship smartphone in the US. He claims the company doesn’t have the resources at this point to sell the smartphone in the US due to restructuring that the company is currently undergoing.
As part of the restricting, the Taiwanese company is laying off pretty much the majority of its current sales force. As a result, HTC may not be able to provide the service required to back its next flagship in the United States. The analyst further suggests that HTC could in the near future change its business model by turning into an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) for companies such as Google. HTC has been doing it in the past for Google, with the Pixel and Pixel XL being the most recent examples.
If the analyst is indeed right, this is definitely bad news for consumers in the US as the HTC 11 is rumored to be a beast in terms of specs. Rumors suggest the HTC 11 will come with a near bezel-less 5.5” Quad HD resolution display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 octa-core 64-bit SoC, up to 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of onboard storage. Rest of the rumored specs include a dual 12MP setup at the back, an 8MP selfie camera, 3700mAh capacity battery with Qualcomm Quick Charge 4.0 support, and Android 7.0 Nougat operating system.
Source: FierceWireless
