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HTC goes to USA
December 24, 2005 [General] | By Edward J. R.

After creating marketing division for Europe in UK, HTC corporation now goes to USA! ... and keeps promoting its own brand stronger and stronger ... so maybe decision of HP and Palm to outsource manufacturing of Pocket PC phones to HTC was a mistake and now HTC can become direct competitor of HP and Palm...

Speaking of Palm, there is a rumor: that upcoming 3 new Treo smartphones from Palm - scheduled for year 2006 - will not be manufactured by HTC (and that they will be powered by Palm OS based on Linux and not on Windows Mobile). So maybe Palm knows more about plans of HTC to expand its own brand or maybe Palm simply sees what is going on, and takes proper decisions... After all Palm has big manufacturing orders for Windows Mobile Treo 700w at HTC and clearly this is already a decided deal. But who knows what will Palm do in future: direct sponsoring one of its main competitors (i.e. HTC) may be in long term suicidal for Palm...

Coming back to HTC USA we can mention that HTC has established "HTC USA, Inc" and launched their official website, that already contains software upgrade for Cingular 2125 smartphone, support pages for Cingular 2125 smartphone, and other information pieces - although this smartphone has been launched just less than one month ago! Interestingly this website of HTC USA is much more sophisticated than main website of HTC in Taiwan, so clearly the message is that either HTC wants to strengthen its own brand - to the extend that it will truly be directly competing with its own contractors (like HP and Palm) or maybe just Cingular didn't want to support Windows Mobile phones made by HTC and outsourced this task to HTC itself...

In any case, whatever is the motivation: HTC is in a conflict of interests because on one side it makes (designs and manufactures) devices branded by various companies as their own and on the other side it now starts to build its own marketing resources in Europe and USA, not to mention massive extension of Dopod's operations to whole Asia and not just China (Dopod is closely related with HTC, much closer than i-mate or Qtek to express it mildly). Big changes are going on at HTC. We only hope that it will be for the good of Windows Mobile platform - not that HTC will start producing soon also Symbian phones (apart from Windows Mobile and Palm OS and Mobile Linux - that HTC already is contract-manufacturing for various corporations)...

And corporations like Palm and HP should think twice before giving further manufacturing contracts to HTC...