HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s largest maker of mobile phones using Google Inc’s Android operating system, may be developing a tablet computer to rival Apple Inc’s iPad.
HTC filed for a trademark for a product called HTC Scribe, describing it as a “handheld wireless device, namely a tablet computer.” The filing was recorded with the US Patent and Trademark Office on Sunday.
A tablet would provide a new growth stream for HTC, whose sales more than doubled in the last quarter from a year earlier.
The company hasn’t announced a tablet and chief financial officer Cheng Hui-ming (鄭慧明) said in October that HTC was “studying the market.”
“This will provide an alternative to the iPad,” Will Stofega, program director at consulting firm IDC in Framingham, Massachusetts, said in an interview. “This will compete on pricing and could be as good or better.”
HTC may launch a tablet during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week or during next month’s Mobile World Congress, Richard Ko (柯良蔚), an analyst at KGI Securities Co (凱基證券), said in a Dec. 13 report.
Shares of HTC rose 0.22 percent to NT$900 yesterday in trading on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Its shares have more than doubled this year.
HTC makes the EVO 4G smartphone, which is capable of video calling and was the first smartphone sold in the US to run over a 4G wireless network. The company’s mobile phone market share climbed to 1.6 percent in the third quarter, from 0.9 percent a year earlier, according to Gartner Inc in Stamford, Connecticut.
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