HTC, a Taiwan-based consumer electronics company, which hasn’t been doing well since the past few years in the smartphone market, is now reportedly caught up in a patent dispute. Because of this patent issue, the company has now pulled all of its smartphone devices from sale in the United Kingdom.
A UK-based company named IPCom GmbH & Co. KG, which specializes in intellectual property licensing and Research & Development, is fighting HTC over patents dispute. The details of this particular legal dispute aren’t too interesting, but HTC agreed at one point to only sell phones in the UK that didn’t violate IPCom’s patents of a wireless technology developed for car phones.
Munich-based Ipcom has alleged it carried out tests earlier this year that showed no workaround had been implemented. IPCom is now alleging that HTC failed to “play by the rules” and has a “disregard for the law by contravening a UK court ruling”.
However, HTC spokesperson told BBC that “we are proactively investigating an infringement claim by a third party with respect to a single handset model.” Meantime, HTC’s website now lists all smartphones as out of stock, though Amazon UK still has a few models left. Other products from HTC, which includes 5G router and virtual reality headsets, remain on sale.
HTC is reportedly making a comeback in the Indian smartphone market with a new flagship smartphone series later this month. The company had stopped selling phones in India due to the low sales and its South Asia head and in-charge of Indian business Faisal Siddiqui had resigned.
There was a time when HTC’s smartphones were known for the build quality and design, the speakers, the user interface and much more, which is no longer the case. India is a price-sensitive market and currently has cut-throat competition. If HTC wants to succeed this time in India, it will have to offer value-for-money phones with aggressive pricing.
(Source)
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