The First Native Blockchain Phone

By Raghav Sawhney

Taiwanese technology giant HTC has unveiled a Blockchain powered smartphone and the community has gone berserk!

HTC’s global market share has sunk to a major low, falling from 11% in 2011 to less than one percent in 2017. Compared to Samsung’s two million units of Galaxy S8, HTC’s high-end smartphone production reached to only about 500,000 to one million devices being shipped out last year.

But it seems like they might just have the plan to break through!

At the Consensus conference in New York City, HTC Vive creator Phil Chen announced the forthcoming project launch, the HTC Exodus, with support for multiple blockchains, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) networks, as reported by PCMag on May 15.

Chen claims HTC will stress heavily on high standards of security and data protection, as the Android phone features a universal cryptocurrency wallet as well as a “secure hardware enclave”. He said the company’s mission is to support the entire blockchain ecosystem in order to “help underlying protocols expand their base of dedicated nodes”.

“I want to see a world where the end consumers can truly own their data—browsing history, identity, assets, wallets, emails, messaging—without the need for central authorities.”

• Phil Chen

The company may consider accepting cryptocurrencies as payment for the sale of the multiple Blockchain powered smartphone, although no price or date of release has been revealed as of now.

HTC is not the first to develop a blockchain-based mobile phone. In April, FIH Mobile, a subsidiary of Foxconn Technology, agreed to help develop a phone for the blockchain-oriented OS developer and supplier Sirin Labs.

Also to remind the readers, Foxconn is the manufacturer that makes iPhones.