Back in November, HTC and Apple finally settled their ongoing patent battles by agreeing to terms on a 10-year licensing agreement. The settlement covers all current, pending, and future patents. The exact terms of the deal are unclear, but some reports claim HTC is paying Apple $6 to $8 per device. HTC CEO Peter Chou denied those numbers, though.
HTC China’s Ryan Yam now claims that the deal actually heavily benefits HTC. The agreement will allow HTC to dedicate the resources it was putting towards litigation towards creating great phones. “The biggest benefit to us is that we can put more energy into innovation, which is more important than anything else for a technology company,” he told Focus Taiwan. HTC wasted “too many resources on the Apple lawsuit,” which detracted from the company’s main focus.
While the settlement won’t have an immediate effect on the company, it should start to pay off sometime this year. “The settlement with Apple will start to pay off next year, and the fourth quarter of this year is still going at a set pace,” Yam claims.
Golden Sachs analyst Robert Yen agrees the deal will give HTC clear advantages in the smartphone space, which will help the company gain some market share. “This could potentially allow HTC to offer smartphone products better than those of its Android peers in terms of features and user experience, which would help the company pick up marketshare,” Yen says.
One British firm does not buy Yam’s claims and says that HTC will continue to struggle, even with the litigation behind them. “HTC continues, however, to face the same structural problems it had before the settlement, such as lost market share in the U.S. and intensifying competition in China’s smartphone market,” British Bank Barclays says. The bank believes that the deal will have no effect on the company unless it uses the agreement to work with Apple on devices. “Unless HTC and Apple build further business relationships or cooperate on mobile devices, Barclays believe the settlement remains a non event in terms of HTC’s fundamentals.”
While it’s great there so much optimism inside HTC, whether or not the company actually benefits from its deal with Apple remains to be seen.
Source: Focus Taiwan