HTC Watch Continues To Shutter Across Europe

HTC-Watch

HTC Watch, the movie store that comes pre-installed on HTC devices, will close in the United Kingdom on March 31. HTC confirmed the news in an email to users this week, and the company encourages them to download movies to their devices if they wish to keep them.

“From 31st March 2014, HTC can confirm that it will no longer support the HTC Watch video-on-demand service,” the Taiwanese firm said in a statement today. “We would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused to HTC Watch subscribers and would encourage any customers affected by the change to contact their local HTC support centre.”

HTC didn’t give an explanation for the closure, but given Watch was shuttered in a number of other European countries last May due to a lack of interest, it hardly seems surprising. The company did promise to keep the service going in markets with the “highest engagement,” but 10 months on, it appears the U.K. is no longer in that category.

Watch was launched back in 2011 to give HTC handset owners an alternative to Google Play for renting and purchasing movies and TV shows. The service is baked into HTC Sense for Android, and also came pre-installed on the company’s Windows Phone smartphones.