HTC’s New Ad for the One A9

9to5Mac is calling it a “copy of Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial” for the original Mac. If that’s the intention, they did a terrible job. The phone itself is a great copy of the iPhone 6 — it looks good. The commercial, though, is downright cringe-inducingly bad. The vague and floundering nature of this spot underscores HTC’s institutional helplessness. Nothing they do works to actually sell a meaningful number of phones, they don’t understand why, and they don’t know what to do. So, this.

Thematically, the message is that iPhones are for parents and squares, HTC phones are for kids and rebels. That’s a message HTC started telling themselves four years ago. Meanwhile, in the real world, kids think green text message bubbles are gross.

One last point: is “Android Marshmallow” a selling point for the mass market? How many people know that means “the latest version of Android”? One percent?

★ Thursday, 5 November 2015