HTC started accepting preorders for the HTC 10 on April 25 through TMall and Jingdong Mall, two of the major e-commerce sites in China. Records show that 11 days after the preorder campaign kicked off, the number of units ordered was only at 251.
The latest report was revealed by Focus Taiwan, which also said that preorder sales on the handset clearly indicate how consumers in China showed a lack of interest in HTC's latest flagship.
According to market sources, customers in China gave a disapproving nod to HTC's move to lower certain specifications in the HTC 10, which is set to launch in the China market. What makes it even more disheartening for fans in China is that the HTC 10 version launching globally will come equipped with more favorable specificatons.
The specification in question is the HTC 10's processor. The China-bound version of the phone will have Qualcomm's Snapdragon 652, which is considered to belong to the mid-tier range. It's no match for the more powerful Snapdragon 820 chip that HTC 10 consumers from other parts of the globe, including Taipei, New York and London, will have.
HTC said that choosing a processor version for the handset for a specific market is part of the company's strategy to launch a flagship at a more affordable price point. In China, HTC priced the flagship at 3,799 yuan ($584), equivalent to NT$19,000. The price is relatively lower than the NT$24,900 offered to customers in Taiwan.
Perhaps consumers are now more aware of what they really want in their devices, so they are not totally concerned about how much they are spending - so long as they are getting the features that they want. Looking at the rest of the features of the HTC 10, it seems like a decent device with really neat offerings.
The HTC 10 comes with a 5.2-inch Quad HD LCD 5 display and has storage versions of either 32 or 64 GB. Consumers can easily expand storage to reach up to 2 TB using the built-in microSD card slot. Other notable highlights include 4 GB of RAM, Android 6.0, dual BoomSound speakers that have Dolby Audio, a trio of noise-cancelling mics, a 3.000 mAh battery, woofer plus tweeter, fingerprint sensor, USB Type-C, HTC Sense 8 UI and four color versions: Topaz Gold, Camellia Red, Carbon Gray and Glacier Silver.
Preordering for the HTC 10 will remain available until May 8.
