HTC has delivered a handful of great devices in 2012, but none of them seemed to really resonate with consumers – until now. According to Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, the company is seeing a strong demand for the HTC J Butterfly in Japan which is exceeding initial expectations. There’s no indication that there is a shortage of the HTC J Butterfly, but Peter Chou claims that HTC will ship a “large number” of phones by the end of December.
Based on our initial feedback, the phone has become very popular in Japan and we have been endeavoring to boost our shipments,Peter ChouHTC
It’s impossible to know how many units were initially allotted to the Japanese market, but we are not surprised that consumers are reacting favorably towards the HTC J Butterfly. At it’s core, the J Butterfly is very similar to the HTC Droid DNA which launched on Verizon Wireless a few weeks back. The phones share most of the same specs, but the Japanese variant trades in wireless charging for a microSD card slot and water resistance – a “must have” smartphone feature in Japan.
HTC plans to launch the phone in Taiwan in late December as the HTC Butterfly and will be pricing it at NT$22,900 (US$788), roughly 10% lower than the Apple iPhone 5 which starts at NT$24,900. There’s still no news regarding the launch of the HTC DLX (the European variant of the J Butterfly), but we have a feeling that HTC will be holding it back in to make room for the mysterious HTC M7 which is rumored for an early 2013 launch.
