Ampers & Dot

Starting in the late ’90s, HTC has been a driving force of some of the coolest mobile devices on the market. But because HTC rebranded phones for other companies, until recently, you likely wouldn’t have known where the devices came from. Now, after more than a decade behind the scenes of the smartphone world, HTC’s taken huge steps in marketing itself as a consumer product. (For a little more background reading on HTC’s history, check out my totally geeky post from last fall on HTC’s move from being an ODM to an OEM.)

If you’ve walked around New York, or if you’ve watched primetime TV recently, you’ve probably seen ads for HTC. Here’s one of my favorite current spots:

HTC’s launched an aggressive campaign in the US market to get its name out to consumers. And this is a very, very good move.

For HTC to increase its stake in the US market, consumers need to associate HTC as a company. HTC might have made dozens of phones that consumers know well, but until late 2008 HTC hadn’t even put a logo on a US-released phone. And consumers are very brand conscious with phones: people often ask “what’s that phone?” to which they expect a response like “Razr” or “the new Samsung” or “BlackBerry Bold” (don’t even get me started with phones named like “The Verizon XV6825asdf blah blah blah83425″ because that’s a post for another time). Consumers want brand named devices.

With a successful branding campaign, HTC can become a household name for mobile devices. I mean, it worked for LG. Only a few years ago no one in the US had heard of LG, but with a number of high quality phones, a bit of branding, and good marketing, and consumers go into stores asking for “The LG Vu” or what not.

HTC’s made some of the best quality devices and while that’s been enough to build the company a reputation of success within the gadget community, it’s good to see it take steps towards the larger market. Now, as they combine that with a branding campaign, I expect great things coming for HTC and look forward to seeing more a) awesome devices and b) impressive advertising.