Earlier this year, HTC followed the trend of hardware manufacturers releasing their custom Android apps into the Play Store for easy updating, but now the Taiwanese firm is ready to take things one step further.

HTC is launching a dedicated software group known as HTC Creative Labs that will focus on creating apps for devices other than HTC’s own. The first release, which is coming later this week, will be the Zoe app that lets users create brief clips using images, videos, themes and music. Other users will be able to edit, expand and share clips.

Zoe will be available to non-HTC devices, though Re/code reports that the beta version of the app is currently somewhat limited: it can only run on high-end phones with the latest version of Android and also has a limited set of editing features. In order to help boost interest in Zoe in a crowded field of sharing apps, HTC plans to partner with unnamed music and sports entities.

HTC has long used a combination of unique software and and premium hardware to try and attract customers. That strategy hasn’t exactly catapulted HTC to the top of the Android OEM heap, though, so apparently now the company will try to offer its own software to boost its growth. Whether or not it’ll work remains to be seen, but I’m betting that at least some folks at HTC are willing to try anything at this point. It’ll be interesting to watch this situation play out and to learn how HTC plans to market its software and make money off of it.

What do you make of this news? Are you looking forward to using HTC apps on non-HTC hardware?

Via Re/code