Rolex of smartphones

Samsung has been eating HTC’s lunch in terms of sales for a long time now but HTC isn’t all that worried about raw market share numbers. Droid Life draws our attention to a new CNBC interview with HTC America President Jason Mackenzie, who says that HTC doesn’t concern itself with market share numbers because its smartphones are much better designed than Samsung’s and are akin to Rolex watches.

“Really, you pick up an HTC phone versus a competitor, it’s literally like comparing, you know, a Rolex to a Timex,” he said. “Unlike some of our competitors who really focus on mass marketing, we pour our soul into our phones and so we believe that at the end of the day, if we deliver a great product… that you’re going to feel proud to actually put down on the restaurant at the table or at the bar… that the market share and all that will take care of itself.”

Mackenzie makes a couple of interesting points here. First, he’s right that HTC’s all-metal phones have much more solid builds and stylish designs than many of Samsung’s plastic contraptions. Second, he’s right that many people are focussing too much on market share when there are other factors that need to be taken into account when it comes to analyzing how well a smartphone vendor is doing.

Unfortunately for HTC, none of those factors look very good for it at the moment. Apple can persuasively argue that its market share doesn’t matter as long as its devices keep delivering it monster profits and as long as its users remain more engaged than users on rival devices. HTC has certainly not been posting Apple-sized profits and typically posts very small margins when it does make money. So while HTC’s hardware is indeed terrific, comparing its phones to Rolex watches doesn’t stand up to very basic scrutiny.


/Yahoo/