HTC Prepping to Launch its Wearable Device By Christmas 2014

Once a trend setter in the handset business, HTC has been facing a backlash from investors and critics alike. The year 2013, in particular, wasn't exciting for the Taiwanese handset maker. The company's award winning flagship handset, the HTC One, failed to break Samsung's winning streak.

Despite loosening faith, the Taiwanese giant appears to be optimistic about 2014 when compared to 2013, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. In an interview with Bloomberg, Chairman Cher Wang, HTC, apparently confessed that HTC will enter wearable devices market later this year.

"A wearable device will be available by this year's Christmas shopping season after years of development and technical challenge", Cher Wang said.

"Many years ago we started looking at smartwatches and wearables, but we believe that we really have to solve the battery problems and the LCD light problems," she said in the interview.

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HTC didn't clarified whether the said wearable device would be a smartwatch. However, one can safely assume that the company has already started working a real wearable device slated to land later this year.

While Sony and Samsung have already announced their respective wearable gadget in the form of a smartwatch, Apple, on the other hand, is expected to announce its first such device, dubbed the iWatch sometime later this year.

Other than HTC, few other Taiwanese vendors such as Asus and Acer are working on futuristic wearable gadgets. Both companies will reportedly launch their smart watches at Computex 2014.

According to ABI Research, ninety million wearable computing devices will be shipped in 2014 driven by sports, health and fitness.

The next twelve months will be a critical period for the acceptance and adoption of wearable devices," says senior analyst Joshua Flood. "Healthcare and sports and activity trackers are rapidly becoming mass-market products".

"On the flipside, wearable devices like smart watches need to overcome some critical obstacles. Aesthetic design, more compelling use cases, battery life and lower price points are the main inhibitors. How vendors approach these challenges and their respective solutions will affect the wearable market far in the future."