Owners of HTC devices might have panicked a little when news started going out that HTC apps were disappearing from the Google Play Store. Apps like the HTC Mail app were unpublished last February and in fact, in the last three months, a total of 14 HTC apps were removed. This led to much speculation about the future of not just the apps themselves but the handset business of the Taiwanese company in general. Fortunately, there was a rational explanation from HTC as to what happened.
The problems of HTC when it comes to sales of their smartphones isn’t a big secret and so when apps started disappearing, people speculated that they may be unpublishing apps because there were not a lot of users and so it wasn’t worth it to maintain them. But when some of the apps started reappearing again, it became clearer that there may have been some issues with Google Play Store itself.
HTC finally released an official statement saying that because of a policy change enforced by Google Play Store, some of their apps fell short of the requirements and so they had to be unpublished and then altered to comply with the new policies required of apps within the Google Play Store. They have already republished apps like HTC Mail, RE Camera app, and HTC Sense Home Launcher.
They announced which apps will be coming back next and when the tentative dates will be but of course they are subject to change. HTC People, Sense Companion, and Restore apps should be back by the end of April. They will also be reviewing additional apps but the list indicated are the ones prioritized based on how many users they have.
The good news is that HTC isn’t planning to stop support to their apps on the Google Play Store anytime soon. However, it doesn’t also mean that there are no more problems within the company as they continue to fall behind Chinese OEMs like Huawei and Xiaomi and bigger brands like Samsung and LG.
