Rumour: HTC is preparing a streaming music service

Always looking for services that differentiate their mobile products from the competition, HTC is preparing their own streaming music service.

Starting as a simple white brand smartphone manufacturer, Taiwanese manufacturer HTC has become a big name on the global market, shipping millions of handsets each quarter while becoming one of the largest players in the field.

Being implicated in the sector for a number of years, HTC knows the importance of being able to differentiate themselves from the competition by offering a unique user experience. This is the aim of their HTC Sense layer present on most of their mobile products, along with the progressive integration of a range of utilities and multimedia services.

2011 allowed HTC to unveil new possibilities with HTC Watch, while providing users with access to entertainment via OnLive, with the manufacturer also cozing up with Beats Audio to provide an optimised sound experience (or at least a distinct one) on their devices.


Everything for mobile music?
According to GigaOM, HTC could go even further down this track by soon offering a pre-installed streaming music service on their Android smartphones and tablets. The manufacturer is studying pricing options and various details about how to make such a service work.

It seems that this is a project that HTC has wanted to implement for a long time. Negotiations have been underway with service providers, like Spotify, although nothing concrete has come about yet.

The manufacturer is working with Jimmy Iovine, co-founder of Beats Audio, to undertake this initiative. The project could be extended to include accessories, with a sound broadcast system that exploits the streaming services that can be driven from HTC smartphones via Bluetooth.

The HTC music streaming service could be the subject of an announcement at the MWC 2012 show in Barcelona, in late February, no doubt in addition to new smartphones and a tablet.