High Tech Computer
Type	Public (TSEC: 2498)
Founded	1997
Headquarters	Taoyuan, Taiwan
Key people	Cher Wang (Chairwoman), Peter Chou (CEO), Fred Liu (COO)
Industry	Telecommunications
Revenue	▲$2.3 billion USD (2005)
Operating income	▲$380 million USD (2005)
Net income	▲$366 million USD (2005)
Employees	4,930
Website	htc.com

High Tech Computer Corporation (TSE: 2498), known by its abbreviation HTC, is a Taiwan-based manufacturer of Microsoft Windows Mobile portable devices. It was founded on May 15, 1997 and was strictly an outsourcing company, an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM). Today, HTC provides its own HTC self-branded products, as well as supporting its operator-branded products and its OEM partners. HTC also owns Dopod as a subsidiary company. HTC is also a member of the Open Handset Alliance, meaning that it will conform to standards that allow the open source Android operating system to run on its hardware; the company is reportedly working on an Android-based phone, dubbed the Dream, that will be on the market by the end of 2008.^[1]

Corporate information

HTC's chairwoman is Cher Wang, daughter of one of Taiwan's wealthiest men Wang Yung-ching, and the President is Peter H.T. Chou. In addition to being Chairperson of HTC, Cher Wang is also acting Chairperson of VIA Technologies. HTC's main divisions, including the IA (Information Appliance) engineering division and the WM (Wireless Mobile) engineering division, are ISO 9001/ISO 14001-qualified facilities.

The company's growth has accelerated dramatically after being chosen by Microsoft as a hardware platform development partner for the Windows Mobile operating system (based on Windows CE). HTC's sales revenue totalled $2.2 billion for 2005, a 102% increase from the previous year. It was listed as the fastest growing tech company in BusinessWeek's Info Tech 100.^[2]

Product range

HTC Prophet, branded as O₂ XDA Neo

HTC products are sold under several brand names — HTC (hTc), Dopod (HTC's subsidiary company) and Qtek — and are often rebranded by major telecommunication carriers such as Orange, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, O₂, Vodafone, AT&T, Alltel, Bell and Telus.

HTC is the ODM for the following IT companies that retail Windows Mobile based PDAs: Dell (x50 series aka HTC Colorado), Fujitsu-Siemens, HP/Compaq, i-mate, Krome, Sharp Corporation., UTStarcom.

HTC announced the development of a UMPC (HTC Shift) following their strong Smartphone and PocketPC line.

The product range developed by HTC include:

Smart Phones (Windows Mobile Standard)

Pocket PC Phones (Windows Mobile Professional)

Other devices

• HTC Universal was sold as the Qtek 9000, Dopod 900, T-Mobile MDA Pro, O₂ Xda Exec, Orange SPV M5000, Vodafone VPA IV, Vodafone V1640, SFR V1640, E-Plus PDA IV, i-mate JASJAR and Grundig GR980. It has a clamshell body, QWERTY keyboard, built-in 802.11b Wi-Fi, 128 MB ROM, 64MB RAM, and a 640x480 VGA display. It was the first commercially available device that has the Windows Mobile 5.0 OS pre-installed, as well as the first Windows Mobile device to support 3G/UMTS.
• HTC Athena, HTC Advantage X7500/X7501/X7510. It has a large 5" VGA TFT touchscreen display, a detachable hardware QWERTY keyboard, 8GB hard drive, miniSD Card slot, quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, stereo Bluetooth support plus a TV-Out port and a 3 megapixel camera with second VGA camera. Windows Mobile 5.
  • HTC Advantage X7501 is Windows Mobile 6 and does not have the second VGA camera.
• HTC Clio, HTC Shift. Windows Vista Business OS and Windows Mobile 6 Professional, with a sliding 7" widescreen touch sensitive TFT display with Wide-VGA (800x480 pixels) resolution, a 30GB hard drive, a dual-core Intel Santa Rosa processor (for Windows Vista Business OS) and a Qualcomm 400 MHz processor (for Windows Mobile 2006 Professional), 1GB RAM, hardware QWERTY keyboard, quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support plus UMTS/HSDPA capability as well as Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi. The device also has a front-mounted 1.2 megapixel webcam, and a fingerprint sensor which can be used for security reasons.

Other products

• HTC Venus a smartphone designed by HTC for Sony Ericsson
• HTC Touch Family

External links

• High Tech Computer Corporation Homepage
• Official HTC wiki site contains info on how to set up and use HTC phones
• Qtek Europe
• Qtek France
• Dopod China

References