HTC Considering its Own Mobile OS

In an interesting admission, Taiwanese smartphone vendor HTC has stated that it’s been considering purchasing its own mobile OS – though chairwoman Cher Wang insists that nothing is set in stone. As the company currently offers both Android and Windows Phone-based models, the idea of it pursuing its own OS is interesting.

Could HTC want to become like Apple and offer only a single OS across its entire line-up? Would HTC OS act as just another offering? Would it support an app base that would be compliant with solutions already out there (namely Android)? These questions are just scratching the surface, but in truth there are many others.

A big problem for me with mobile OSes is that we’re starting to get spread pretty thin, and if a vendor wants to create its own proprietary solution, it’s going to have a hard time getting it up off the ground. Many people are locked into the likes of iOS and Android, having sunk hundreds of dollars into apps, so it’d take an amazing OS and equally amazing hardware to cause people to even consider jumping ship.

MeeGo and WebOS had some major potential, but both were shoved to a corner before they even had a chance to succeed. Could HTC be considering purchasing one of these, or does it plan to build something from the ground up? Most mobile vendors seem to have their own OS from the get-go, so to consider making one after having offered other OSes for so long, it’s going to be quite a challenge.

HTC has the resources however to have a good go at things, so if it does indeed decide to pursue this option, the results should be interesting.