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.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
RSS