High Tech Computer to supply Sprint with cellphones

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 (王景鴻), HTC's chief marketing officer said in a telephone interview yesterday.

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.