HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s leading maker of smartphones running on Windows Mobile and Android platforms, yesterday said it had filed a counter-lawsuit against Apple Inc, asking for an injunction on the sales of the popular iPhones, iPads and iPods in the US.
HTC has filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission (ITC) in the US to halt the import and sales of the devices in the country because of an infringement of five HTC patents, the company said in a statement released yesterday.
“As the innovator of the original Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition in 2002 and the first Android smartphone in 2008, HTC believes the industry should be driven by healthy competition and innovation that offer consumers the best, most accessible mobile experiences possible,” Jason Mackenzie, HTC’s vice president for North America, said in the statement.
“We are taking this action against Apple to protect our intellectual property, our industry partners, and most importantly, our customers,” he said.
The move is HTC’s counter action against Apple, which filed lawsuits in a US District Court in the state of Delaware and with the ITC in March, accusing HTC of violating 20 iPhone patents related to “user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.”
The iPhone, whose sales hit more than 40 million worldwide in the first quarter, was introduced in 2007 by the company behind iPods, iPads and Macintosh computers.
Apple is asking for unspecified damages and an injunction to prevent HTC from making or selling products using the patents in dispute.
Currently, US consumers have a variety of choices among 12 HTC smartphones available from national wireless carriers, the statement read.
Recent models include the Evo 4G with Sprint, the Droid Incredible with Verizon Wireless and the HD2 with T-Mobile.
The smartphones market — viewed as the next growth engine for the overall cellular phone industry — is indeed heating up.
The NPD Group said this month that sales of Android phones unexpectedly topped Apple’s sales for the first quarter in the US, with 28 percent and 21 percent market share respectively.
The BlackBerry platform was first at 36 percent.
Researcher IDC, meanwhile, released its first-quarter market share data, placing Nokia and Research in Motion (the maker of BlackBerry) atop the worldwide smartphone market, with 39.3 percent and 19.4 percent respectively. Apple finished third at 16.1 percent, while HTC was the fourth at 4.8 percent.
Bolstered by the statement released yesterday morning, shares of HTC closed up 3.7 percent at NT$432 (US$13.1) in Taipei trading.
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IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
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