HTC Corp (宏達電), the leading maker of smartphones running on Windows Mobile and Android platforms, yesterday said a lawsuit filed by Apple Inc would not affect the company’s operations in the near term, nor would it affect its first-quarter financial guidance.
“HTC has been focusing on the development of many smartphones over the past 13 years,” company spokesman Cheng Hui-ming (鄭慧明) said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. “We are not only an inventor of mobile technology, but also the owner of multiple patent rights.”
HTC users are enjoying a unique experience through the company’s proprietary “HTC Sense” user interface and a horde of innovative smartphone technologies, he said.
The firm values the protection of patent rights in international markets including the US, and it would work closely with the US legal authorities on the lawsuit, he said.
The statement, which was filed early in the morning, helped stabilize the company’s share prices, which only dropped 2 percent to close at NT$323.5 (US$9.8) in Taipei. The benchmark TAIEX inched up 0.42 percent.
The Cupertino, California-based Apple filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in a US District Court in the state of Delaware and with the US International Trade Commission, accusing HTC of infringing on 20 iPhone patents related to the “user interface, underlying architecture and hardware” of the iPhone.
“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it,” Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said in a brief statement.
“We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours,” Jobs said.
The iPhone, whose sales have hit more than 40 million worldwide, was introduced in 2007 by the company behind the iPod and the Macintosh computers.
Among the HTC-made devices mentioned in the suit are the Nexus One, the T-Mobile G1, also known as the HTC Dream, the HTC Touch Diamond, the HTC Touch Pro, the HTC Tilt, the HTC Pure and the HTC myTouch.
Apple is asking for unspecified damages and an injunction to prevent HTC from making or selling products using the disputed patents.
HTC’s global market share in the smartphone sector rose to 6.9 percent last year from 6 percent in 2008, making its phones the fourth most popular, Gartner Inc said.
Apple, in third place, increased its share to 16.1 percent from 10.7 percent. Research In Motion Ltd’s share was unchanged, while Nokia, the No. 1 smartphone maker, lost ground.
HTC said in January that it was betting on its upcoming portfolio to continue its strength in North America, which accounted for 48.8 percent of its total revenues last year.
The firm estimated first-quarter sales of between NT$32 billion and NT$34 billion, up from NT$31.6 billion a year ago, on the back of the growing brand awareness and introduction of mid-range models.
First-quarter shipments of own-brand phones were expected to rise 30 percent from last year, it said.
China’s economic planning agency yesterday outlined details of measures aimed at boosting the economy, but refrained from major spending initiatives. The piecemeal nature of the plans announced yesterday appeared to disappoint investors who were hoping for bolder moves, and the Shanghai Composite Index gave up a 10 percent initial gain as markets reopened after a weeklong holiday to end 4.59 percent higher, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dived 9.41 percent. Chinese National Development and Reform Commission Chairman Zheng Shanjie (鄭珊潔) said the government would frontload 100 billion yuan (US$14.2 billion) in spending from the government’s budget for next year in addition
Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) suffered its biggest stock decline in more than a month after the company unveiled new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, but did not provide hoped-for information on customers or financial performance. The stock slid 4 percent to US$164.18 on Thursday, the biggest single-day drop since Sept. 3. Shares of the company remain up 11 percent this year. AMD has emerged as the biggest contender to Nvidia Corp in the lucrative market of AI processors. The company’s latest chips would exceed some capabilities of its rival, AMD chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) said at an event hosted by
Sales RecORD: Hon Hai’s consolidated sales rose by about 20 percent last quarter, while Largan, another Apple supplier, saw quarterly sales increase by 17 percent IPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday reported its highest-ever quarterly sales for the third quarter on the back of solid global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) globally, said it posted NT$1.85 trillion (US$57.93 billion) in consolidated sales in the July-to-September quarter, up 19.46 percent from the previous quarter and up 20.15 percent from a year earlier. The figure beat the previous third-quarter high of NT$1.74 trillion recorded in 2022, company data showed. Due to rising demand for AI, Hon Hai said its cloud and networking division enjoyed strong sales
TECH JUGGERNAUT: TSMC shares have more than doubled since ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022, as demand for cutting-edge artificial intelligence chips remains high Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday posted a better-than-expected 39 percent rise in quarterly revenue, assuaging concerns that artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending is beginning to taper off. The main chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported third-quarter sales of NT$759.69 billion (US$23.6 billion), compared with the average analyst projection of NT$748 billion. For last month alone, TSMC reported revenue jumped 39.6 percent year-on-year to NT$251.87 billion. Taiwan’s largest company is to disclose its full third-quarter earnings on Thursday next week and update its outlook. Hsinchu-based TSMC produces the cutting-edge chips needed to train AI. The company now makes more
RSS