"When executives from Google and T-Mobile converge on a stage in New York Tuesday (today) to unveil the first mobile phone powered by Google’s software, the event will be a coming-out party of sorts for another, far more obscure, but no less ambitious company — HTC."
Obscure? That's quite an indictment for a vendor which manufactured over 20% of smartphones sold in the US.
My phones for over 2+ years have been the HTC 8125 and the 8925 (called Tilt by AT&T in US). While both are paperweights, they have allowed me GPS, 3G, MS Docs, Voice dialing, modem, unlocked SIM and several other features a long time before the iPhone supported them (or will ever). Nowhere near as multi-media friendly as the iPhone but a solid business usage device which puts up with lots of abuse.
What HTC needs to do (along with Microsoft and its Win Mobile group) is develop a much more vibrant application ecosystem. The iPhone is crushing it in that department. Also it needs to become more aggressive with "friends" like AT&T which mask or disable a bunch of its features and apps from its existing ecosystem. Finally, HTC needs to think in terms of global branding. The 8925 also goes as Kaiser, TyTN II, P4550 and MDA Vario III around the world .
Not just HTC - Taiwanese component suppliers play a vital role in most mobile technology today. As this breakdown of the iPhone shows, Taiwan is very well represented.
Not obscure by a long shot.
