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Feb. 16, 2010

HTC launched a trio of new smartphones today in Barcelona. CEO Peter Chou said he expects HTC to be among the top three smartphone makers in less than two-and-a-half years from now.

While noting some of the many difficulties the mobile industry went through in 2009, Chou boasted it “was the most significant year in the history of HTC.”

First in the list of new HTC smartphones to be made available soon is the HTC Legend, a 3.2-inch AMOLED HVGA touchscreen device that's made out of a single block of aluminum with an optical trackpad.

While introducing the new mobile handset, CMO John Wang dropped it rather aggressively to give the audience a sense of its rugged body.

After raising its brand's profile considerably last year, HTC is now continuing to refine its new Sense handset and pursuing smartphone market share growth even more aggressively, Wang said during a morning press conference.

Next, Wang introduced the HTC Desire, which the company is marketing as its most visually rich experience thus far. The 3.7-inch AMOLED WVGA touchscreen device is Flash Lite-enabled to render the highest level of visual realism possible, Wang said.

He then introduced a refresh of the HD2 in a more compact form factor called HD mini. Just like its sister device, HD mini will also have the ability to share a wireless connection with other devices via Wi-Fi.

New features in the new Sense handset include “polite,” which automatically reduces the volume of the device's ringer once a user picks it up when receiving a call. In an increasingly recurring theme at this year's Mobile World Congress, HTC is also adding a feature that captures all social networking services in one place called Friend Stream.

Another new addition to Sense, called Leap, lets wireless users pinch anywhere on the homescreen and view thumbnails of each of their pages, making it easier to navigate the suite of applications throughout the device without the need to navigate from page to page.

HTC says the software update will be available on some existing devices like the HTC Hero along with all of its new products.

All 3 new devices will run on the Android 2.1 operating system and be launched across Europe and Asia in about 6 weeks with a record number of wireless operators already confirmed to carry the full line at launch, HTC added.

There was no word about availability in North America. As he wrapped up the event, Chou said HTC will continue to work with Microsoft and it has plans to release new devices for Windows Phone 7 Series when Microsoft launches the operating system at the end of 2010.

However, and in line with the bulk of other operating systems news coming out of Mobile World Congress, HTC is also aggressively betting on Android.

It remains to be seen how much investment the company will put into Microsoft's latest OS though, considering it is seemingly increasing its bet on the Android OS.

For its part, HTC showed no signs of slowing today in Barcelona, where more than 120,000 visitors and industry insiders have showed up so far.

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Source: HTC.