High Tech Computer Corp (HTC, 宏達電), the world's biggest maker of handsets running on Microsoft Corp's system, said yesterday that it would supply Sprint Nextel Corp with a cellphone featuring a touch screen and high-speed CDMA transmission next month.
The sale will put HTC in direct competition with Apple Inc's touch-screen iPhone in the US.
The iPhone only enables data transmission at slower speed based on the 2.5G, or edge technology.
"The debut of Touch in North America will further strengthen HTC's deep partnership with Sprint as well as provide US consumers with stronger performing cellphones," company chief executive officer Peter Chou (周永明) said in a statement yesterday.
Sprint Nextel, the third-largest mobile carrier in the US, only offers wireless services on the CDMA2000 technology, which is an incompatible competitor of the other major 3G standard.
In June, HTC unveiled the first model of the Touch series in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, but has not yet started to sell the phone in the US.
"At the moment, we will focus on selling the 3G model in cooperation with Sprint," John Wang (
The US is a highly competitive and dynamic market and HTC wants to collaborate with its customers in offering diversified services on customer-made handsets, Wang said.
"The [sales] prospect for the Touch series should be quite fair," he said.
Since the introduction of the Touch series four months ago, HTC has sold more than 800,000 of the phones around the world, Wang said.
Beginning on Nov. 4, Sprint will sell HTC's 3G Touch at US$249.99 with a two-year subscriber agreement and a US$100 mail-in rebate.
Standard data rates will apply for music and other content downloads.
The launch of new 3G and 3.5G smartphones should help boost HTC's revenues by 15 percent to NT$33 billion (US$1 billion) in the fourth quarter from NT$29.11 billion in the third quarter, Citigroup analyst Dale Gai said.
HTC is one of the top picks that Citigroup suggests buying.
Gai raised the target price for HTC to NT$680 on Wednesday, implying that there would be around a 11 percent upside over the coming 12 months.
HTC shares closed at NT$611 yesterday in Taipei.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS