In a recent interview with Business Insider, president of the North American division of HTC, Mike Woodward showed some relief over what Samsung announced during their highly anticipated event.

As you probably know by now, the Galaxy S 4 features a design that too dissimilar from that of its predecessor, the Galaxy S III. Some have even gone as far as calling it the Galaxy S III S, which as gaudy as it sounds is not entirely inaccurate. Samsung has seemingly mirrored Apple’s “Tick Tock” strategy with the S 4, choosing not to necessarily reinvent the design but iterate while embellishing the device with new features.

Woodward’s comments show that HTC was pleased with this decision. “We were pleased to see no innovation in the design itself,” he said during the interview. HTC’s own flagship phone on the other hand, the HTC One, has been universally praised by reviewers for its premium quality design.

While he does acknowledge the fact that Samsung introduced new features with the Galaxy S 4, he doesn’t particularly think their strategy is focused on innovating:  “I think Samsung is trying to overwhelm us with money and marketing and then pushing multiple features out there,” he said.

Overall, I’d have to agree with Mr. Woodward here. It’s certainly good for them and other manufacturers that Samsung didn’t innovate in terms of design as that would’ve meant even more sales (especially if they went with higher quality material) to the current Android leader. It also does seem like Samsung is pushing more features than necessary, and it remains to be seen whether users will actually use a good number of them after the initial cool factor wears off.

But Samsung is putting in more money in advertising than Microsoft and Apple do and at the end of the day, that’s gonna sell them millions yet again. Despite HTC being in the position they are, if they want the HTC One to have any chance of surviving, they’re going to have to push it and not rely on Samsung “not innovating.” At the end of the day, Samsung will be doing the same. Hard.

[via Business Insider The Verge]