The blockchain-powered Exodus smartphone will be launched by the end of 2018, its producer HTC confirmed on Tuesday. The product was initially announced in May.
The price of the device will be revealed in the third quarter of the year, but will most likely match the $1,000 cost of Sirin Labs’ blockchain-powered phone Finney, HTC’s chief decentralizing officer Phil Chen, who has led the development of VR headset HTC Vive, told The Verge.
Exodus will be released worldwide except in China, where the regulations are different compared to everywhere else.
“I want to say it will be available definitely everywhere outside of China,” Chen said.
In May, Cryptovest interviewed Chen on the planned release of Exodus. At the time, he said that the new device is expected to become attractive for those who develop Dapps on Ethereum.
“That’s the whole point. We provide user experience expertise but we also want to expose the whole user base to Ethereum, ERC tokens, and all the DApps,” Chen has said.
The Taiwanese company, which was well rewarded by the market for taking the risk to build the first Android smartphone, is hoping for another big success. Moreover, the company apparently is experiencing financial troubles. On Friday, HTC announced that its sales fell some 68% on the year in June, its biggest decline in over two years.
In the first quarter of 2018, HTC sold only 630,000 phones compared to over two million devices shipped only in the first quarter of 2017. To stay in the game, the company took radical measures, cutting 1,500 jobs in Taiwan last week.
HTC is also collaborating with CryptoKitties, the popular blockchain-based game that revolves around collecting and maintaining virtual cats. The game will be incorporated in the Exodus device, along with an online wallet.
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