HTC 4G LTE Android & Windows Phone 7 Handsets Coming in Second Half of 2011

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Verizon has just turned on the LTE switch in some markets and, although we expect it to announce several LTE smartphones at CES 2011 that doesn’t mean all those handsets are going to be released any time soon. In fact the HTC Android and Windows Phone 7 LTE smartphones coming in 2011 are now said to arrive only in the second half of the year.

The news comes all the way from HTC’s CEO Peter Chou that went on record about HTC LTE handsets for the U.S. public in an interview with Mobile World Live. He did confirm that HTC will continue to make both Android and Windows Phone 7 smartphones and that NFC (Near Field Communication) a technology that’s going to be supported by Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and, allegedly by the iPhone 5 too, is also going to be used by HTC in upcoming handsets.

While HTC doesn’t appear ready to launch LTE devices anytime sooner, other smartphone makers might choose to start selling LTE handsets before HTC does, so we’ll just have to wait for Verizon to tell us what are its first LTE smartphones going to be.

You could argue that since LTE is still young, HTC might not interested in launching LTE handsets too soon in order for Verizon to actually be able to increase LTE coverage so more of its subscribers can select an HTC LTE device as their next smartphone. But, on the other hand, the HTC EVO 4G, HTC’s first WiMAX Android device, and the world’s first 4G Android device, was launched in 2010 at a time in which Sprint was still deploying its own 4G network.

Considering that CES and MWC are approaching we can only assume that HTC might announce a bunch of future LTE devices at these events only to have them released to the public at some point in June/July, just like it did with the HTC EVO 4G this year.

Anyone particularly interested in a 4G LTE handset from HTC?