Ongoing lawsuits with archrival Apple Inc have not deterred HTC Corp (宏達電) from spending yesterday, as it announced the acquisition of a US cloud computing services provider to beef up its competitiveness in the smartphone market.
HTC said it would spend less than US$18.5 million to purchase Dashwire Inc, a Seattle-based company that offers cloud computing solutions that connect consumers’ various mobile devices.
Dashwire is the brains behind the Dashworks platform, which provides mobile and Web applications that enable users to personalize their smartphones and access mobile content using multiple devices. Dashwire will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of HTC, according to a company statement.
Photo: Bloomberg
“People want to access all of their important content wherever they are, on any device. The addition of Dashwire’s sync services and mobile cloud computing experience strengthens our ability to deliver these services,” Fred Liu (劉慶東), president of engineering and operations, said in the HTC statement.
HTC said it will utilize Dashwire’s solutions to enhance its HTCSense.com cloud computing service that it launched last year.
The world’s No. 5 smartphone brand has embarked on a number of patent purchases and acquisitions to enhance its mobile capability, given the heated competition, patent lawsuits and more players developing their own software offerings.
Last month, the company spent US$300 million to acquire S3 Graphics Co, a US-based graphic chip designer, hoping to land some bargaining chips in its patent lawsuits with Apple. HTC is also spending US$75 million by 2014 to acquire 82 issued patents and 14 patent applications from US telecommunications equipment maker ADC Telecommunications Inc to strengthen its wireless communications technology.
In March, HTC announced it would spend US$10 million buying an 11.1 percent stake in online music service provider KKBOX Inc to beef up its online music offerings.
In February, HTC spent ￡30 million (US$48 million) on the acquisition of Saffron Media Group Ltd, which develops software for delivering content over the Internet, and US$40 million on games-on-demand provider OnLive Inc to help the firm entice customers to its tablet and smartphone offerings.
Separately, HTC yesterday reported record revenues of NT$45.11 billion (US$1.56 billion) for last month, up 83.29 percent year-on-year.
Cumulative revenue from the beginning of the year to last month was NT$273.67 billion, up 121.56 percent compared with the same period last year.
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