Far EasTone Telecommunications Co Ltd (遠傳電信), the nation’s third-biggest telecom operator, yesterday said it planned to offer its first phone running the Android system in the third quarter.
Far EasTone said in a press release it planned to introduce at least two mobile phones powered by Android, an operating system supported mainly by Google Inc.
The company declined to reveal the names of its Android phone suppliers.
Far EasTone’s announcement came just before the nation’s largest phone company, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), along with HTC Corp (宏達電), launches its first Android phone, the HTC Magic, tomorrow.
HTC is the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones running on Microsoft Inc’s system and is also the first one to make Google phones, which it unveiled with T-Mobile in last September.
Meanwhile, Chunghwa yesterday said its board had approved a capital reduction proposal to better utilize the company’s assets and boost shareholders’ investment return.
Chunghwa said in a company statement that it planned to allocate NT$9.7 billion (US$287 million) from capital surpluses to issue about 969 million common shares. It will then cancel about 10 percent of its total capital shares, it said.
In addition, Chunghwa said it planned to pay a stock dividend of an additional 9 percent per common share following the cancelation. The company’s board agreed last month to distribute NT$3.83 in cash dividends per share. The proposals will be subject to shareholders’ approval on June 19.
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