HTC One on Sprint won’t have any carrier branding
As first discovered by PocketNow, it appears that the HTC One on Sprint will be completely devoid of carrier branding when it’s finally released to the masses. This is in stark contrast to other carriers, most notably Verizon, who made the controversial decision to stamp its logo on the home button of the Samsung Galaxy Note II.
This move actually makes sense for Sprint, though, since the nation’s third largest carrier started embracing the “bring your own phone” movement with its prepaid partners. Essentially, this will allow users to use the Sprint HTC One on any compatible CDMA network that the consumer wants, without a constant reminder on the hardware that the phone was supposed to be used only on Sprint.
Sprint’s director of product marketing had this to say:
[PocketNow via Phandroid]The movement has less to do with de-emphasizing our brand and more to do with the flexibility that it provides us in our multi-brand strategy. Increasingly, we are launching similar devices on both our Sprint brand and our no contract brands, Virgin Mobile and Boost. Removing the carrier brand gives us manufacturing and logistical economies in the event that we launch the same device on multiple brands. Also there is a difference between hardware branding and software branding. Sprint is still very focused on software branding which can be dynamic in nature.