While CEOs are there to help oversee the operations of a company, it’s nice to hear that sometimes they don’t mind getting their hands dirty by actually helping with the development of a product. Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs was notorious for being very hands-on, and it looks like HTC’s CEO, Peter Chou, is equally involved.
In a recent interview with the folks at Engadget, it was revealed that Chou was integral in the design process of the company’s latest smartphone, the HTC One M8. With a background in product management, it’s easy to see why Chou had the know-how and the desire to involve himself in the phone’s creation process.
For starters during the phone’s early stages, Chou walked around with a wooden block shaped like the One M8. He also took it out of his pocket from time to time and place it against his ear to see what it might feel like to answer calls on it: basically he wanted to see what the consumer saw, and not necessarily what a CEO or someone part of the team saw.
During the process, he constantly provided feedback to the team. “We were working back and forth on fine-tuning it; ‘I don’t like this curve, I want it to be more natural in the hands, I want this completely metal, completely pure.'” Chou also revealed that during the design process, HTC usually goes through 30-50 prototypes which we guess is pretty normal.
Development of the phone’s camera also reportedly began a good 18 months ago, meaning that it was in development even before the HTC One was launched in 2013. This forced Qualcomm to incorporate features into their roadmap in order to meet HTC’s requirements.
In terms of smartphones, the HTC One M8 is definitely one of the more luxurious looking smartphones at the moment, especially when compared against the competition from LG, Sony, and Samsung. However will its features and build quality be enough to achieve the sales that HTC desires? We guess only time will tell.
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