HTC to Customize Android Mobile Phone

Taipei, Sept. 26, 2008 (CENS)--HTC Corp. will introduce customized types of its G1 handset, which is designed around Google's Android platform, in different markets and will make the tailor-made phones available at telecom carriers and retailers in the first quarter next year at the earliest.

HTC Chief Marketing Officer John Wang said recently that G1 would follow the company's stellar Touch Diamond phone to go customized for different customers. G1 is the world's first Android phone.

G1 is developed for U.S. service provider T-Mobile Inc. Wang stressed this phone boasts the very unique Internet-connection experience that consumers will have with it rather than new functions on it. For instance, the tri-dimensional Google Map navigation is seen nowhere but on the phone.

Wang said his company had worked with Google on Android mobile platform for over three years although Google began opening its Open Handset Alliance (OHA) last year. The alliance now has more than 30 technology and mobile companies who have come to accelerate innovation in mobile platform.

Industry watchers estimated around 200,000 G1s to be shipped a month by the end of this year. Assuming each phone is retailed at US$450, the phone is estimated to inject NT$8.5 billion (US$265 million at US$1:NT$32) into the company's revenue next quarter alone, equaling to 15% of the company's total revenue. They expected more service providers to approach HTC for the phones once G1 makes a big splash.

Industry watchers are bullish about Android's future although it is a late entrant of Internet-enabled mobile phone. They even think HTC will lead Samsung and LG by at least one year with its feat in Android.

The search engine is not the first IT giant to team up with HTC on mobile phone. Around 11 years ago, when Microsoft was eager to diversify into mobile business, it chose HTC as its partner in light of the first Windows-powered personal digital assistant (PDA) it introduced.

G1 is reported to bring fabless house ELAN Microelectronics Corp. a lucrative business by using its touch-panel control ICs. However, the chip design house said it had got involved in Google's mobile-platform project, but the chips it offered were still in pilot-run stage and G1 had not used its chips.

ELAN has made its touch-panel control ICs available in mobile phones, low-priced personal computers, MP3 players and digital photo frames.