HTC VP Americas: Competitors Are Criminals! (video)

The head of HTC's business in the Americas, Jason MacKenzie, explains why competitors' App Store strategy is a crime to developers!

In a keynote style that reminds me of Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer, HTC’s head of the Americas went as far as accusing his competitors (Apple, Motorola, Nokia or Palm) of committing a crime on developers with their App Store strategy.

“A lot of OEMs, a lot of manufacturers talk a lot about apps… Apps, apps, apps, great, cool apps. But what do they do? They relegate all of your hard work and your application to a simple little icon that is in a sea of a hundred of other icons… But unless you’ve got the best icon graphic in the world, when I hold that phone here [about 2 feet away from this eyes] yours look no different than anybody else. We think that’s criminal. Literally,” said Jason MacKenzie, VP Americas at HTC, in his keynote speech the Sprint Open Developer conference yesterday.

On the other hand, the Taiwanese phone maker promotes its Sense framework that let developers put their applications and widgets in front of users, mingled with the smartphone (Android or Windows Mobile) user interface. “We believe that your application should breathe and live on the device and that’s why we developed Sense,” adds MacKenzie.

Early next year, HTC promises to release the Sense SDK (software developers’ kit) for developers to create their own widgets and personalised screens.

Follows the video excerpt where MacKenzie talks about competitors’ app strategy and HTC Sense:

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