Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC president Martin Fichter has said that Apple’s iPhones are no longer "cool."
Fichter made the statement while speaking at the Mobile Future Forward conference in Seattle.
He said that in an informal survey of the dormitory buddies of his daughter studying in Reed College, Portland, he found that young people preferred to have an HTC or a Samsung smartphone.
Fichter said, "None of them has an iPhone," adding, "because they told me: ‘My dad has an iPhone.’ There’s an interesting thing that’s going on in the market. The iPhone becomes a little less cool than it was. They were carrying HTCs. They were carrying Samsungs. They were even carrying some Chinese manufacturer’s devices."
Added Fichter: "Macbook Airs are cool. iPhones are not that cool anymore. We here are using iPhones, but our kids don’t find them that cool anymore."
In a related development, there are rumours that HTC is planning to buy the webOS platform.
HTC may purchase a new mobile OS, HTC CEO Cher Wang told the Economic Observer of China.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) bought webOS family in April 2010.
"We have given it thought and we have discussed it internally, but we will not do it on impulse," Wang reportedly said.
