Companies have used patents to sue each other to win market share, but smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) believes the possession of intellectual property rights (IPR) can help develop innovation.
HTC chief marketing officer John Wang (王景弘) said yesterday the company had acquired hundreds of patents to make possible the design of a camera on one of its new smartphones that focuses on delivering functions from the perspective of the consumer.
Wang did not elaborate on the details of the patents, either in terms of what they were or where they were acquired from. He also declined to comment on a patent infringement complaint filed by Nokia last month.
Photo: Pichi Chuang, Reuters
Last year, HTC spent US$300 million to acquire US-based S3 Graphics Co to bolster its technology capabilities, while Google Inc transferred several patents to HTC to help the Taiwanese company fight a patent battle with iPhone maker Apple Inc.
Addressing the company’s product development strategy, Wang said developers have to “see through consumers’ eyes, make the impossible possible and deliver pleasant surprises” to put a smile on the face of the consumer.
When a consumer wants to shoot photographs continuously, he or she does not want to do any more than just keep pressing a button and that is what the camera on the new One series phone can do, Wang said at a Computex forum at the Taipei International Convention Center.
He said the camera needs just 0.7 seconds to focus on a subject and no extra button-pressing is needed. That is about the same time or quicker than a person takes to focus on a subject, he said.
“We want the camera to work like the user’s eyes,” Wang said.
Wang said HTC also looked into how long people take to react to emergencies and the company found that it was also the magic number of 0.7 seconds.
“That’s how long the camera takes to get ready to take a picture after it has been activated,” he 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
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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],”