HTC China recently announced its new Dual-SIM mid-tier Android smartphone E1 in April 2013. But unlike the sea of mid-tier Android smartphones, HTC is differentiating this device by offering online buyers in HTC eShop to "customize" the E1's specs such as color, memory size or camera megapixels, thus, a "made-to-order" device.

On entering the eShop page for E1, users are presented to input their "Birth Date" & "Gender" using which the HTC eShop's algorithm spits out a suggested configuration (case color, memory size, camera megapixels) as a part of the online customization experience. Users are obviously free to choose or tweak their own configuration as well.

This though is a basic customization effort but a very interesting and novel step from HTC to differentiate from other Android OEMs especially in markets such as China where Android dominates with 9 out of 10 smartphones sold. We expect to see more "customization" efforts from OEMs this year to make the smartphone buying experience highly engaging and also the device to be bought to truly match user's requirements making it more personalized and differentiated.