HTC and Telefonica O2 introduce the HTC Smart

HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, and Telefonica are today announcing an exclusive partnership to sell the HTC Smart, an affordable and easy-to-use smartphone on O2 in Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The HTC Smart is a new type of smartphone that offers easy-to-use widgets, browsing and connectivity at an affordable price.

‘More and more people are craving advanced mobile phone experiences with email, web browsing and social networking but the cost and complexity often represent a significant obstacle for many. The HTC Smart introduces this functionality in an intuitive phone that is affordable,’ said Peter Chou, chief executive officer, HTC Corporation. ‘With the HTC Smart, HTC and Telefonica share a similar vision for bringing easy-to-use, affordable smartphone experience to the masses.’

HTC Sense
The HTC Smart embodies HTC Sense, HTC’s unique design philosophy that focuses the mobile experience on people. The HTC Smart’s compact touch design integrates the pillars of HTC Sense – Make It Mine, Stay Close and Discover the Unexpected – to deliver a user-friendly user experience. People can customise their own, personal HTC Smart experience using a variety of widgets for quick access to contacts, photos, music, weather and more. People are able to follow their friends’ status updates using HTC Friend Stream, an application that seamlessly aggregates all of your social communication including Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr into one organised flow of updates. This simple aggregation makes it easier than ever to focus on what friends are doing as well as the images and links that they share.

‘We believe this is a key move in our ability to bring smartphones to a far wider cross section of the population,’ said Matthew Key, chief executive officer of Telefonica Europe. ‘The benefits of web browsing on the move and ability to experience applications like mobile social networking will now be brought to the mass market and reinforces O2’s position as the home of the smartphone.’

HTC Smart utilises Qualcomm’s Brew Mobile Platform’ (Brew MP), a powerful and popular mobile operating system that enables HTC to deliver the HTC Sense experience on more affordable smartphones. By pioneering a new era of mass-market smartphones, Brew MP also provides the HTC Smart with a mass-market opportunity for new applications and services from software developers worldwide.

“Qualcomm’s collaborations with HTC have resulted in some of the most innovative smartphones the market has seen in recent years,’ says Paul Jacobs, chief executive officer of Qualcomm Incorporated. ‘The HTC Smart is a budget-friendly smartphone that delivers a really exciting user experience. We are pleased to be supporting HTC’s move to bring this advanced mobile experience and HTC Sense to the widest possible audience.’

Availability
In addition to being exclusively available through O2 in Germany, Ireland and the UK in April, the HTC Smart will also be available in Italy with Telecom Italia, Norway with Netcom and across Europe through the direct channel.