HTC Corp (宏達電), the leading maker of smartphones running on Windows Mobile and Android platforms, yesterday said a lawsuit filed by Apple Inc would not affect the company’s operations in the near term, nor would it affect its first-quarter financial guidance.
“HTC has been focusing on the development of many smartphones over the past 13 years,” company spokesman Cheng Hui-ming (鄭慧明) said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. “We are not only an inventor of mobile technology, but also the owner of multiple patent rights.”
HTC users are enjoying a unique experience through the company’s proprietary “HTC Sense” user interface and a horde of innovative smartphone technologies, he said.
The firm values the protection of patent rights in international markets including the US, and it would work closely with the US legal authorities on the lawsuit, he said.
The statement, which was filed early in the morning, helped stabilize the company’s share prices, which only dropped 2 percent to close at NT$323.5 (US$9.8) in Taipei. The benchmark TAIEX inched up 0.42 percent.
The Cupertino, California-based Apple filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in a US District Court in the state of Delaware and with the US International Trade Commission, accusing HTC of infringing on 20 iPhone patents related to the “user interface, underlying architecture and hardware” of the iPhone.
“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it,” Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said in a brief statement.
“We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours,” Jobs said.
The iPhone, whose sales have hit more than 40 million worldwide, was introduced in 2007 by the company behind the iPod and the Macintosh computers.
Among the HTC-made devices mentioned in the suit are the Nexus One, the T-Mobile G1, also known as the HTC Dream, the HTC Touch Diamond, the HTC Touch Pro, the HTC Tilt, the HTC Pure and the HTC myTouch.
Apple is asking for unspecified damages and an injunction to prevent HTC from making or selling products using the disputed patents.
HTC’s global market share in the smartphone sector rose to 6.9 percent last year from 6 percent in 2008, making its phones the fourth most popular, Gartner Inc said.
Apple, in third place, increased its share to 16.1 percent from 10.7 percent. Research In Motion Ltd’s share was unchanged, while Nokia, the No. 1 smartphone maker, lost ground.
HTC said in January that it was betting on its upcoming portfolio to continue its strength in North America, which accounted for 48.8 percent of its total revenues last year.
The firm estimated first-quarter sales of between NT$32 billion and NT$34 billion, up from NT$31.6 billion a year ago, on the back of the growing brand awareness and introduction of mid-range models.
First-quarter shipments of own-brand phones were expected to rise 30 percent from last year, it said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”