HTC

HTC Corporation (), or High Tech Computer Corporation (abbreviated and trading as HTC), is a Taiwanese consumer electronics company headquartered in Xindian District, New Taipei City, Taiwan. Founded in 1997, HTC began as an original design manufacturer and original equipment manufacturer that designed and manufactured laptop computers. After initially making smartphones based mostly on Windows Mobile, HTC became one of 34 cofounding members of the Open Handset Alliance, a group of handset manufacturers and mobile network operators dedicated to the development of the Android operating system. The HTC Dream (marketed by T-Mobile in many countries as the T-Mobile G1) was the first phone on the market to run Android. Although initially successful as a smartphone vendor as it became the largest smartphone vendor in the U.S. in Q3 2011, competition from Samsung and Apple, among others, diluted its market share, which dropped to just 7.2% by April 2015, and the company has experienced consecutive net losses. In 2016, HTC began to diversify its business beyond smartphones and has partnered with Valve to produce a virtual reality platform known as HTC Vive. After having collaborated with Google on its Google Pixel, HTC sold roughly half of its design and research talent, as well as non-exclusive rights to smartphone-related intellectual property, to Google in 2017 for billion. Cher Wang (王雪紅) and H. T. Cho (卓火土) founded HTC in 1997. Initially a manufacturer of notebook computers, HTC began designing some of the world's first touch and wireless hand-held devices in 1998. HTC started making Windows Mobile PDAs and smartphones starting from 2004 under the Qtek brand. In 2006 the range was rebranded as HTC with the launch of the HTC TyTN. In 2007, HTC acquired the mobile device company Dopod International. In 2008, HTC unveiled the HTC Max 4G, the first GSM mobile phone to support WiMAX networks. HTC joined Google's Open Handset Alliance and then developed and released the first device powered by Android in 2008, the HTC Dream.