Sony is certainly no stranger to the mobile space — the recently-divorced Sony Mobile Communications branch has been announcing plenty of handsets lately, but the company has decided that their PlayStation-certified hardware efforts need to extend beyond their own walls.
That said, Sony has just revealed that their first non-Sony hardware partner will be none other than HTC.
To help emphasize the company’s renewed commitment to mobile hardware, Sony has also given the PlayStation Suite the old rebranding treatment. Going forward, the PlayStation Suite will be known as PlayStation Mobile. Sony originally released the PlayStation app creation framework as an open beta back in April, an event that they claim was very well received by the developer community.
HTC is quite an interesting choice here, considering that they’ve been very busy inking deals to flesh out their own media and services ecosystem. Sony applauded the Taiwanese company for the strength of their industrial designs, which has clearly been one of the company’s greatest strengths (just look at HTC’s One series). Sony’s mobile design efforts aren’t bad by any stretch, but HTC’s design prowess could help take future PlayStation-certified devices in some visually distinct directions.
In fact, it wouldn’t be the first time Sony and HTC have teamed to produce some special hardware. Sony Ericsson worked with HTC back in 2008 to create the very first Xperia device, the Windows Mobile-powered Xperia X1. The strangely alluring device was about as handsome as a Windows Mobile device could get at the time, and the fruits of that working relationship may have been lodged in some Sony exec’s head this whole time.
Meanwhile, HTC is assuredly looking at this new partnership as a way to further differentiate themselves from other strong Android players like Samsung and Motorola. Whether or not that new hardware will pan out the way both companies hope is still completely up in the air, but hopefully they’ll reveal some more juicy details as E3 presses on.