| The article claims "The HTC One X and One X+ are dead!" The thing to understand about HTC is that from a strategic perspective, they're trying to stand over a rift that only gets wider every month. On the one side, they can't afford to develop an operating system, runtime, and ecosystem on their own. On one other side, they need to somehow "add value" to the Android experience, either through software (i.e. "extras" or "rethinks") or through hardware (in which they have plenty of competition) or, at best, finding overlooked combinations of the two that they can provide (e.g. a power button that's also an IR remote for your TV.) They don't have a truly stable platform on which to add these improvements. In many cases the platform will beat them to whatever it is they want to add, and they won't have anything "new" to promote as their own. As (or if) Android matures gets closer to the point where each new version matters less than the last, then they'll eventually have something like a stable platform to further focus their efforts on making the smartphone they want to make. It all depends on how much their users care about new Android. I don't have any armchair advice this decision, but it's interesting to consider the trade-offs they're making. Disclosure: I used to work for HTC. |
Android will never get to that point. Technology, hardware as well as tastes and expectations change, and Android will always need to stay current. Some releases will be small, others will have huge rewrites, or additions.