HTC bolsters handset design with One & Company acquisition

If you thought HTC Corp.’s Touch Diamond felt and looked better than its predecessors, that was the company’s intent.
Today HTC said it would acquire the boutique, San Francisco-based design house One & Company Design Inc., which assisted in designing the Touch Diamond.
The value of the deal and its terms were not disclosed.
But for HTC, the move to bolster its industrial designs, improve its approach to colors, materials and finishes (CMF) and tie design to demographic target markets coincides with its ambitions to grow a global brand for itself. Though HTC once (and still) provides innovative smartphones for branding by others, it has of late struck deals to ensure that its products – even at major U.S. carriers – carry its own logo, too.
The next step, apparently, is to provide the designs that will make “HTC” stick in consumers’ consciousness. The two companies are in pursuit of what One & Company’s partner, Scott Croyle, called an “emotional connection” between HTC’s products and the consumers who buy them, the basis for a clear brand identity.
Expect to see more evidence of the collaboration between HTC, a leading purveyor of smartphones, and One & Company. Executives of both companies said that the design firm, though owned by HTC, would continue to have autonomy as it pursues design business outside the mobile handset space.
Clearly, however, the acquisition is designed to bring fresh air to HTC’s design efforts. Although HTC has excelled in creating innovative smartphones – largely running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile operating system, it also was first to bring an Android-powered OS to market with the T-Mobile USA Inc. G1 handset – its design and CMF work have lagged.
According to Horace Luke, chief innovation officer for HTC, his company’s design efforts will draw on synergy between its home offices in Taiwan and U.S.-based design centers in Seattle and, now, San Francisco. The collaboration with One & Company began in 2006, he said, resulting in the Touch Diamond.
One & Company, with 18 employees of diverse national backgrounds, will continue to work on design accounts in footwear, snowboards, furniture, packaging and other fields – experience that Luke said would benefit HTC’s in-house designers as well.