HTC has discontinued 9 of its own Android apps in the last 3 months

It could be said that HTC has been struggling as a mobile device manufacturer for a while. It appears that its next upcoming flagship is not much more than a refresh of its predecessor. The Taiwanese OEM has also taken measures such as releasing a 'blockchain phone' in order to crack a potential new audience.

Now, there is more evidence that HTC's woes continue unabated. AppBrain, a site that follows the app publication behavior of many individual studios and businesses, has observed that the company has withdrawn a number of its apps from the Google Play Store.

Users of HTC phones may recognize them as apps that come pre-installed on their devices. They include HTC People, HTC Service—Video Player, HTC Calendar, HTC Mail, HTC Speak, HTC Car and HTC Ice View. HTC Dot View, an app that controls the OEM's custom-made flip-cases of the same name, is also on this list. Most strikingly, HTC Sense Home, the company's proprietary Android launcher, is the latest of these now-inactive app.

Most of these apps were discontinued in February 2019, although the rest - Sense Home included - gained an 'unpublished' status on April 3, 2019. This may be a worrying indictment of HTC's future as a once-great name in mobile devices. On the other hand, other examples of its apps, including HTC File Manager, HTC Gallery and HTC Sense Input are still going strong.

In addition, these AppBrain reports may be explained by a decision to replace the apps in question with Google's own-brand, default counterparts that do most of the same things. This could lead to a cleaner, more 'pure Android' UI on HTC phones in the future - which, at this stage, could not hurt anything.