Tom Tom and HTC have came to an agreement to utilize the Tom Tom navigation system to power HTC Locations, which will give the HTC a distinctive advantage over competitors using Google Maps or their own software. The Tom Tom enhanced mobile navigation will initially be trialed on the Desire and Desire Z phones, and will be available in the European and Asian zones.
The turn by turn navigation functionality however will not be included out of the box, but will be availiable for download.
Guerrilla marketing is a technique used to market in a usually highly creative and highly unexpected form. Ikea used the technique to convert a bus stop into something more of an enjoyable place to sit and rest whilst waiting for your bus. Folgers made use of steam from manholes, (on an unrelated subject why do US manholes generate steam anyway?) to emulate warm coffee.
HTC and Nokia have been playing a bit with the technique as well. Nokia’s world conference was attacked by HTC offering free bus trips over to their own press conference to show off the new competitor to the iPhone4. In response to the hijacking of journalists, Nokia generated its own form of guerrilla advertising against them,in this case they released a HTC Survival kit, consisting of a sandwich, giant Nokia Finger Badge and energy boosting chocolate. Quite amusing really.
Nokia further sent an entire army of people armed with hideously red Nokia balloons to stand outside HTCs event with it claiming they know where they are going with Nokia’s Ovi Maps. Standing outside an HTC conference claiming they know where they are going however may not represent Nokia’s Ovi Maps too well however.
On the serious side of things, a spokesman for HTC says that the stuns show that Nokia considers HTC to be a serious competitor and going by the fact that my phone operator is out of stock of the desire, I can certainly agree with the assessment.
References
sparxoo.com
SMH.com.au
posima.com
Marketallica
Apple and HTC/Google have been fighting quite a lot lately. Is it possible that this could really stir up the problems between the three companies.
The new pad on the market ,or at least coming to the market is developed by HTC which has a strong relationship with Google.
If the rumours are true the device will have quite an impressive specification: NVidia Tegra 2 processor, with a 1280×720 multi touch display, 2Gb of RAM, a 32Gb or more of SSD storage, webcam, GPS, and Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 3G networking.
The device is expected to be far cheaper given the special relation ship with US carrier Verizon and is expected that it may ship for as little as the cost of a standard data contract. Given what it does, and the superior operating system over the iPad this could quite easily replace the iPad completely as the next big thing.
A year ago or so, many of us had not even heard of an HTC let along what they do. Now it seems they are one of the stronger players in the mobile phone market. With a huge 140% increase in shipments presummably backed up with actual product sales against the same period last year it has thrown them into a strong position as a top 10 mobile phone manufacturer.
It would appear that the launch of the iPad has actually had no effect on the mobile phone sector at all.
References
InformationWeek
