Download SmartRSS PluginPhone Tied to Google Puts HTC in Spotlight
The introduction of the first cellphone powered by Google’s software is a coming-out party for another more obscure but no less ambitious company — HTC.
HTC, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, was chosen by Google more than two years ago to build the first mobile phone based on its Android software in large part because of its proven ability to design and build head-turning mobile devices.
For HTC, it amounted to another victory in its efforts to do battle for the high end of the phone market with the likes of the iPhone maker Apple, BlackBerry’s maker, Research In Motion, and others.
“I think we are ready,” said Cher Wang, a Taiwanese plastics mogul’s daughter who helped found the company in 1997 and serves as its chairwoman. “We have a strong customer base of people who want our devices.”
HTC accounted for about one in six smartphones in the United States in the first half of this year, but the overwhelming majority of them do not carry the HTC brand, according to Nielsen Mobile.
For much of the past decade, the company operated in relative obscurity as a contract manufacturer for companies like Compaq, Palm and many cellphone carriers, who stamped their own brands on the products.
About two years ago, HTC decided to come out of the shadows with an ambitious goal: establish a global consumer electronics brand that its executives hope will become synonymous with quality.
“We are far from being there,” said John Wang, HTC’s chief marketing officer. But Wang said the company was off to a good start. It has sold two million units of the HTC Touch, introduced last year, and in just three months, one million units of the Touch Diamond, a slick and slim device that reviewers have compared to the iPhone.
The Google-powered phone, which was scheduled to be presented Tuesday…
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Yeah, that’s right. Google. I know they’re selling a mobile phone now, but Google isn’t a service provider. Well, we can all rest assured—a little—the FCC’s letter to Google acknowledges that T-Mobile is the service provider. However, T-Mobile received a letter of its own. So why single out Google of all the hardware providers? (Just wait.)After all, Apple makes the iPhone, and you can buy directly from its website. Google’s webstore offers you the choice of an unlocked phone without a plan or a (cheaper) phone with a T-Mobile plan (Verizon and Vodaphone are still slated for spring). Apple’s iPhone store doesn’t offer any choice but to buy the phone with an AT&T data plan (that I can see, without giving my info).But there’s something that Google does that Apple doesn’t. The unlocked Nexus One is $529, but when you buy it with a T-Mobile plan, the price drops to $179. However, if you cancel your contract in the first 120 days of service, the Terms of Sale state that in addition to T-Mobile’s early termination fee, you’ll also be subject to an “equipment recovery fee”—the $350 subsidy on the phone price.To my knowledge, when you buy a discounted phone from other mobile carriers, they don’t charge that subsidy on top of their ETF. In fact, that was part of Verizon’s initial justification of its high early termination fee to the FCC. (A justification the FCC found “unsatisfying, and in some cases, troubling.”)The FCC’s look at Google may be prompted by consumer complaints (they aren’t saying), but it still shows an impressive level of sophistication in the modern marketplace. (Let’s face it—after looking at the way federal commissions handle the Internet, it doesn’t take much to impress me.)Google, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T have until February 23 to respond.What do you think? Will the FCC knock down early termination fees—and if they do, will phone subsidies from mobile carriers be a thing of the past?Comments
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