HTC Done with Physical Keyboards for Smartphones

At the Frequencies Media gathering in Seattle recently, the Taiwanese Mobile Manufacturer HTC announced that it has elected to not produce anymore smartphones featuring a QWERTY keypad. HTC Creative Director, Claude Zellweger said, “As a company, the QWERTY keyboard [is something] we’re moving away from in general.” Speculations about the move have led to explanations about move resulting from the dismal sales that was garnered on devices like HTC’s ChaCha which reportedly did not sway many people their way.

Another plausible reason as to why QWERTY keyboards seems to be going the same way as Beats by Dre earphones did for HTC is because the Android operating system is optimized for large touchscreens instead of devices where the screen real estate is limited due to a clunky keyboard. While there are people who would swear by their HTC ChaCha, what do you think of this development? Will you be one of them who miss the physical QWERTY keyboard?