HTC’s partnership with Beats was one of the rare successful partnerships in the smartphone industry, until the companies recently divorced each other. Well, it seems that the Beats and HTC chapter wouldn’t be over without a fulfilling ending. HTC’s eagerly awaited flagship phablet, the HTC One Max will come with Beats Audio, confirms Beats’ Chief Operating Officer Luke Wood.
“They still have a 25 percent investment in the company, and additionally we still have a commercial deal with them, around the HTC One and several new devices coming out this fall. We have a large-format HTC device out in the fal.l I don’t even know if they’ve announced it yet – so we’re still on that device”
This device should be nothing else but the HTC One Max.
While he kind of confirmed for us the availability of Beats on the One Max, the company isn’t sure of a future with HTC past that.
“We learned a lot of great things with HTC. Right now I can’t comment as to whether that relationship will continue or not continue, but for Beats, it’s been very productive, because we’ve done a lot of work [on HTC phones] and I’m very proud of the way those devices sound.”
The Beats audio partnership has worked in HTC favor and created a great USP for its handsets such as the HTC One. One of the ideas he has for the smartphone market that smartphone makers will will slowly but steadily abandon bundled headphones and make better investments in sound.
“They’re going to say, well, consumers are going to upgrade anyway. I think that’s a great thing because then the consumer has to make a choice about how they’re committed to sound. I use my iPad every single day but it has a mono speaker. I’m not going to consume my media with that so I use a headphone, right? I have a choice to pair it via Bluetooth with a speaker or headphone, and where you do that, you have to make the choice: what’s your investment in sound?”
Well, we surely agree. This also goes to show that Beats will actively sort out smartphone collaborations and work on improving sound. Thinking about a Samsung Beats audio handset or an Apple Beats handset, are we?
