HTC has no plan for 'mini' version of One M9 flagship phone

Taipei, May 17 (CNA) Taiwan's HTC Corp. has no plans to launch a downsized version of its One M9 flagship smartphone because the market is witnessing a move towards larger screen sizes.

Jack Tong (董俊), president of HTC North Asia, said the company would end its "mini" product lineup created two years ago, which consists of the 4.3-inch HTC One mini launched in July 2013 and the 4.5-inch HTC One mini 2 launched in May 2014.

"Overall the industry is moving towards new phones over 5 inches in size and our product roadmap is close to that of the industry," Tong said on May 14 at the Taiwan launch of the One M9+, a bigger and more powerful version of the 5-inch One M9.

The M9+, which was released in the Taiwan market just two months after its predecessor, features a 5.2-inch 2K display with a resolution of 1440 x 2560 pixels, a Media Tek Helio X10 octa-core 2.2GHz processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage capacity and a fingerprint scanner built into a home button on the front.

Seen as a foray into emerging markets such as China and India, demand from Taiwanese carriers for the M9+ has been slightly better than for the M9, according to HTC.

The company also launched the One E9+ dual sim -- a 5.5-inch cheaper version of the One M9 -- on April 24 in Taiwan to strengthen its foothold in the NT$15,000-20,000 (US$494-658) price band.

Since 2013, HTC has unveiled the One mini and One mini 2 as stripped-down versions of the One M7 and One M8 respectively, but software updates for the mini phones are usually later than those for standard models.

(By Jeffrey Wu)ENDITEM /AW