HTC Smart Phones on the Rise

Taiwanese smart phone maker HTC is on a roll!! In 2009 alone, the company has released five Android handsets. Its next phone, the HTC Nexus One, also known as the Googlephone, is among the most anticipated devices of 2010. Barely 10 years old, HTC appears to be poised to pull ahead of much older and larger rivals such as Samsung and LG in worldwide phone market share. While the older companies’ strength lies in now-declining “feature phones,” or inexpensive, less-capable handsets, HTC’s bet on the booming smart phone business is giving it a major boost. It has also acquired a powerful teammate in Google, the Goliath whose attention is now captivated by the mobile phone business and whose chosen partner is HTC. “We have covered a distance in the last three years that many other companies haven’t in ten,” says John Wang, chief marketing officer for HTC. About one in six smartphones in the United States in 2008 was an HTC phone, according to Nielsen Mobile. And with a slew of new handsets and a clever bet on Android, HTC is now the fourth biggest smartphone maker, after Nokia, Research In Motion and Apple. HTC’s Android portfolio now includes the original G1 and MyTouch on T-Mobile, the Hero on Sprint, and the Tattoo and Droid Eris on Verizon. And while Nokia is struggling to get a grip on the U.S. market, HTC is gaining ground. “HTC got into bed very, very early with Google and that has helped them,” says Avi Greengart, research director for mobile devices at Current Analysis. HTC has risen to prominence rapidly because it is young, ambitious and unencumbered by the legacy technology and old business that slow down its peers. Founded in 1997, HTC has always focused on designing and manufacturing smartphones — multifunctional devices with powerful processors — rather than inexpensive flip phones. It is Android, the Google-designed open source operating system, that turned HTC from a boutique OEM (original equipment manufacturer, or contract manufacturer) into a mobile powerhouse. Over the last decade, HTC’s CEO Peter Chou has quietly networked to build a fat Rolodex and strong relationships with some of the most powerful names in the industry. Android creator Andy Rubin was one of them. Rubin’s company Danger had created the Sidekick, an extremely popular phone on the T-Mobile network. Chou’s HTC would later produce a similar phone called the MDA for T-Mobile. “Google’s OS required a pretty sophisticated handset and HTC knows how to do that,” says a former HTC executive who worked with the company for two years but didn’t want to be identified because he still works in the wireless industry. “HTC is aggressive and they have the speed of development to get a product to market early.” For HTC it was an interesting opportunity, though not without its risks. “When we started to work with Google, we had no visibility at all,” says Wang. “The (Android) platform probably would not even materialize and even if it did, it could be just another one in the market. But we shared the excitement.”