HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s leading maker of smartphones running on the Android and Windows Mobile platforms, said yesterday it was acquiring French mobile application developer Abaxia for 11 million euros (US$13 million).
The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of this month, it said.
“HTC is committed to creating the best possible mobile experience for customers,” HTC chief executive Peter Chou (周永明) said in a statement. “The addition of Abaxia will deepen and broaden our software development capabilities so that we can innovate at an even faster pace.”
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Founded in 2001, Abaxia is a leading France-based international software developer specializing in mobile handset software solutions for network operators and handset manufacturers.
More than 22 million Abaxia applications have been deployed in 36 countries for 60 handset models with tier-1 network operators. It also has 10 global technical contracts with major handset manufacturers, its Web site said.
“HTC and Abaxia have worked closely in the past and our businesses complement each other well. We’re excited to be joining such a significant and emerging mobile brand,” Abaxia CEO Cedric Mangaud said.
Smartphone makers and mobile phone operators have been launching respective app stores, which are viewed as a new cash cow to boost sales.
Apple Inc has an online offering of more than 200,000 applications while Google Inc’s Android has about 38,000.
While HTC doesn’t have its own online app store, Chou has said at recent investor conferences that the company doesn’t rule out the possibility of launching one. He did not elaborate, adding that the timing wasn’t right to launch such a platform yet.
Asustek Inc (華碩電腦) chairman Jonney Shih (施崇棠) said on May 31 — before the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show — that the company was working with Intel Corp and Microsoft Corp to push out its own version of an app store.
Shares of HTC closed down 2 percent to NT$406 (US$13) yesterday before the acquisition announcement in Taipei.
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
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day