HTC boss reveals G1 forecasts

Nowhere near the rumoured 1.5m pre-orders

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27 October 2008 13:23 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

HTC boss Peter Chou has revealed how many G1s the company expects to shift this year - and the figure is nowhere near the 1.5 million that has been rumoured as the number of pre-orders the phone received.

Reports from the States in the lead up to the device's launch suggested that T-Mobile had seen as many as 1.5 million pre-orders for the new smartphone, based on Google's Android operating system, but it appears this is not the case.

Chou said, in an interview with Mercury News: "We should be doing good numbers, but I can't disclose the details. It will be more than what we originally planned. I'm saying we will ship more than 600,000."

Apple recently revealed it has sold nearly 7 million iPhones globally in its last financial quarter.

When pressed on next year's figures, Chou was equally discrete: "We don't disclose particular product numbers. Even Apple doesn't provide those kinds of forward-looking numbers. But in general, we think we can do more next year. We are confident about our competitiveness next year."

Considering the industry as a whole, the HTC boss predicts that smartphones will start to become as-standard phones for consumers, rather than higher-end offerings:

"My gut feeling is 40 to 50% of mobile phones could be these kinds of converged data devices within the next five years... The market size for this kind of product could be 500 million to 700 million."