I'm impressed by how poorly this article has been researched, especially given how short it is.
The article leads us to believe that the "Athena" moniker has been poorly received and that there have been calls to dump this 'brand' in favour of others. The reality however has nothing whatsoever to do with this. "Athena" was the product's codename, used internally within HTC during development of the product, and additionally applying to the completed reference design. As with all HTC handsets, networks and resellers can then apply their own brand names to the reference designs. HTC themselves sell their own handsets under the HTC brand, but always apply an actual model name that is unrelated to the name of the reference design.
The HTC Athena reference design has therefore been given the model name "Advantage" for sale under the HTC brand; T-Mobile has called it "Ameo" for sale under their own brand. Neither T-Mobile nor HTC would have ever had any intention of selling the handset as "Athena".
Other examples include the HTC "Hermes" reference design being branded as the T-Mobile MDA Vario II and Orange SPV M3100; and the HTC "Star Trek"/"STRTRK" reference design being branded as the Qtek 8500 and Cingular 3125.
The reference design name has nothing at all to do with the different names applied by networks and other brands, and to suggest that this handset has suffered some kind of "identity crisis" due to the original Athena name supposedly being a poor choice is utter nonsense.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Andy Weir @ Feb 13th 2007 2:22PM
I'm impressed by how poorly this article has been researched, especially given how short it is.
The article leads us to believe that the "Athena" moniker has been poorly received and that there have been calls to dump this 'brand' in favour of others. The reality however has nothing whatsoever to do with this. "Athena" was the product's codename, used internally within HTC during development of the product, and additionally applying to the completed reference design. As with all HTC handsets, networks and resellers can then apply their own brand names to the reference designs. HTC themselves sell their own handsets under the HTC brand, but always apply an actual model name that is unrelated to the name of the reference design.
The HTC Athena reference design has therefore been given the model name "Advantage" for sale under the HTC brand; T-Mobile has called it "Ameo" for sale under their own brand. Neither T-Mobile nor HTC would have ever had any intention of selling the handset as "Athena".
Other examples include the HTC "Hermes" reference design being branded as the T-Mobile MDA Vario II and Orange SPV M3100; and the HTC "Star Trek"/"STRTRK" reference design being branded as the Qtek 8500 and Cingular 3125.
The reference design name has nothing at all to do with the different names applied by networks and other brands, and to suggest that this handset has suffered some kind of "identity crisis" due to the original Athena name supposedly being a poor choice is utter nonsense.