When pictures began to leak of what would eventually become the HTC One, many in the tech world noticed its striking resemblance to Apple's iPhone 5.
The smartphones have a few things in common and it's not just the aluminum unibody case that houses the smartphones. HTC will ship the HTC One with an updated version of its HTC Sync Manager software that can extract information from iPhone backup files and sync it to the HTC One.
The software will work with PCs and Macs, and HTC is hoping that consumers will not only love the HTC One's iPhone 5-inspired design, but also the convenience it will provide in syncing information from an iPhone.
This won't be the first time a smartphone maker has tried to lure iPhone owners to a new smartphone and platform. Palm did this when it announced the Palm Pre in 2009. At the time, Palm's CEO was Jon Rubinstein, a former Apple employee who just so happened to be nicknamed the "father of the iPod" since he was heavily involved in the creation of the iPod while working at Apple.
At the Palm Pre's introduction, Rubinstein highlighted the fact that the Palm Pre could sync with iTunes; it even showed up in iTunes as an iPod. Apple was not happy with Palm's iTunes syncing and would update iTunes just to break the syncing capability. Palm would then update the Pre to enable iTunes syncing again. This cat and mouse game went on for a few months until Palm finally gave up.
HTC's Sync Manager works in a much different way than Palm's iTunes syncing did. HTC's software extracts information from an iPhone's backup file. This information can then be used to transfer an iPhone's contacts, calendar information, pictures, video, music and more to the HTC One. It remains to be seen if this new feature will have any real effect on getting an iPhone owner to switch to the HTC One. HTC deserves some credit for at least addressing this issue and making it an easier process for iPhone owners looking to make the switch ... but it just might take a little more than that to tempt an iPhone user over to the HTC One.
