We recently told you that there would be an HTC One Google Edition, just like the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition. Rumors also claimed that the smartphone would be announced very soon. Now we're hearing that when the HTC One with a Nexus user experience is announced, it will be in extremely short supply.
HTC has seen great success with the HTC One. The company had recently announced that it has sold around 5 million HTC One units since its launch, even as Samsung just announced it sold 10 million Galaxy S4 units since it has released the smartphone. The reason HTC has only sold 5 million HTC One smartphones is because HTC faced a delay when it initially launched the smartphone. In certain areas of the U.S., the smartphone can still be hard to find. T-Mobile is currently offering the smartphone in "select" T-Mobile retail stores due to shortages.
A new rumor now claims that when the HTC One Google Edition is announced(if, at all, it is announced), it will be in very limited supply. When Google announced the Galaxy S4 Google Edition, many Android fans were hoping that they would also get to see the HTC One offered with a stock Android build, and the ability to receive Android updates as Google releases them, just like its current Nexus smartphones and tablets. The Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition became the first non-Nexus Android device to be sold by Google; it would only makes sense that Google would want to follow it up by offering its customers another top-end Android device - the HTC One.
According to sources, HTC might only be able to offer around "1 per cent of total sales of the device so far" as a trial run to see how the smartphone does in sales. If true, that would mean only about 50,000 units would be available at launch. It makes sense for HTC to do a limited run in the beginning since many features found on the HTC One are tightly integrated into HTC Sense 5, the custom skin HTC runs on top of Android, and some of those features will not run on stock Android. Another reason for the limited run could be that the HTC One is still in limited supply in certain regions, even though HTC has doubled production of the smartphone this month. It makes more sense for HTC to focus on building more HTC One smartphones than a Google Edition of the device.
We'll have to wait and see what happens when things become official, and all signs are pointing to an HTC One Google Edition in the near future.
