HTC

A top HTC executive stated this week that the company will still appeal against a preliminary decision by the International Trade Commission in a case brought by Apple.

Winston Yung, a Chief Financial Officer at HTC, said Wednesday that the company has not yet considered a settlement in the case, though he would not rule out any possibilities.

"We are going to appeal. We are confident that we have a strong case," said Yung.

On July 15, the International Trade Commission (ITC) made a preliminary ruling that HTC infringed on two of Apple's patents.

Amazon.co.uk posted new pages for the phones it plans to sell soon. The images depict the two Facebook-branded smartphones from HTC. The handsets are expected to go on sale starting June 26.

HTC-Facebook smartphones come SIM card free and with a dedicated Facebook button. The £250 ChaCha looks like a BlackBerry phone with a fixed Qwerty keyboard and a 2.6in, 480 x 320 screen. Besides, it features HSPA 3G and 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0. as well as 5Mp camera on the back.

HTC says that the ChaCha's 1250mAh battery is good for up to 450 minutes' ChatChat.

The launch of new handsets by HTC overshadowed that of Nokia who announced this week two new Symbian based models. HTC unveiled its HTC Sensation that features a great library of movie and TV shows via a wide screen and with a fast 1.2GHz processor.

This week Nokia launched two new models on an updated Symbian platform that features new icons, better text input, faster Internet browsing and a refreshed Ovi Maps application.

This week HTC unveiled its first Windows Phone 7 handset for AT&T. The phone is dedicated for entertainment and comes with a 4.3 inch screen.

The mobile device features Dolby Mobile and SRS WOW HD surround audio and is integrated with Xbox LIVE and Zune. There is a G-Sensor for gaming and a kickstand to allow you to sit and watch video. The screen is Super-LCD WVGA.

Apart from these, the phone also has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 512MB of ROM and 16GB of internal storage. Besides, it is equipped with 576MB of RAM. No 4G or WiMAX.

HTC made a presentation of its two social networking phones and introduced its first computer tablet. Besides, the Taiwanese smartphone maker also unveiled new versions of its hit models Desire, Wildfire and Incredible. All six devices run Google Android software.

"We believe customers want choice; one size does not fit all," said Philip Blair, product director at HTC Europe.

HTC positioned the tablet in the premium price category, but said its was ready to sell new social networking phones at keenly competitive price levels.

Latest speculations in the media industry say that Taiwanese phone maker HTC will unveil two smartphones bearing Facebook's brand and colors at an event in Barcelona next month.

The latest stats from IDC shows that the global smartphone market saw a nearly 90% growth over the third quarter with the high gains recorded for Samsung and HTC. The report says that vendors shipped 81 million smartphones, up 89.5% from the 42.8 million units shipped in the third quarter of 2009. For the first three quarters, vendors shipped 200.6 million smartphones, an increase of 67% over the 119.6 million shipped for the first three quarters in 2009.

The shelves with Windows Phone 7 handsets are getting empty faster than the phones are supplied to the stores. While Orange decided to please consumers with £20 HMV vouchers as they are waiting, HTC and Samsung handsets are selling out as they fast as they can be shipped to the stores.

According to the data from research firm Canalys this year brought a tremendous growth for Android smartphones with the sales up 1,309% on a year over year basis.

"With Samsung, HTC, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson all delivering large numbers of Android devices, and with focused efforts from many other vendors, such as LG, Huawei and Acer, yielding promising volumes, the platform continues to gather momentum in markets around the world," Canalys analyst Pete Cunningham said in a report.

Revolutionary new concept mobile phone is unpredictably getting available from Mozilla, but not from Apple, Google, Motorola or HTC.

The hottest concept mobile phone, Seabird, was developed by a designer Billy May in his spare time as part of a Mozilla Labs project.

HTC announced its new Desire HD and Desire Z handsets at its media event in London, saying they would go on sale in time for the holiday sales in the fourth quarter.

"The two new devices build on the highly successful Desire phone and take the fight into higher tiers of the market targeting Apple, Samsung and others," said Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight.

Patrick Chomet, chief of terminals at Vodafone, said the operator will introduce the models across its markets.

This holiday season Microsoft is making its another effort to firm its position at the mobile phone market with the launch of Windows Phone 7 phones. According to the estimates of the analysts and experts Microsoft could spend a half-billion dollars or more in marketing costs and payments to developers and handset manufacturers to subsidize the expense of building phones and apps, so that the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem is well-seeded at launch, as noted by the TechCrunch blog.

The US fourth largest wireless carrier T-Mobile USA, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, announced that Google Android based device will be the first mobile phone to run its new high speed network.

T-Mobile said that it would provide more details about the upcoming G2 cell phone in coming weeks. G2 will be the first to support HSPA plus, which T-Mobile USA has made available in 50 metropolitan markets with more than 85 million inhabitants.

As it appears from the latest Microsoft report large companies will unlikely adopt Windows Phone 7 based mobile devices because phones from HTC, Dell, LG, and Samsung won't work out of the gate in October with standard Microsoft technologies used by corporations to deploy and manage their apps.

Research In Motion, LG Electronics, Nokia and HTC are under the investigation of the U.S. International Trade Commission that has received a complaint from FlashPoint Technology. Peterborough, New Hampshire-based FlashPoint alleges that the smartphone makers have violated three patents related to the digital camera functions in the devices.

The complaint seeks an injunction on the import of such products as the Nokia 5230 Nuron, the RIM Blackberry Storm2 9550, the HTC Droid Incredible, the HTC myTouch 3G, the LG Ally and the LG eXpo GW820.