Players in HTC's supply chain, including component suppliers and software and firmware vendors, have been providing assistance to HTC in finding solutions that can enable new HTC smartphones bypassing two patents held by Apple as judged by the US ITC in its initial determination recently.
The new solutions can be adopted by all new smartphones rolled by HTC in 2012, meaning that HTC's shipments of new smartphones in 2012 will not be affected if the ITC sticks to its preliminary assessment and rules the complaint in favor of Apple in its final determination slated for year-end 2011, indicated the sources.
A ruling in favor of Apple would affect only the year-end shipments of HTC's last generation smartphones developed in 2011, and therefore material damages to HTC will be limited, the sources stated.
The team from HTC's supply chain has successfully developed one solution that can bypass one of the two patents, and is working on another solution that still needs to be further modified by software and firmware vendors, revealed the sources.
Article translated by Steve Shen
