We don’t know how much of the mobile market HTC has captured in Germany but its numbers will soon decrease some more. As if it’s not already experiencing a lot of challenges lately, the company is facing sales ban of its smartphones in the country. Last month, the Acacia Research Group LLC won a lawsuit in Germany that granted the firm injunction against HTC.
Those handsets sold through Deutsche Telekom have been questioned by a patent licensing group. Acacia complained that the Taiwanese company infringed on some voice coding technology related patents they own. The lawsuit was filed in 2014 but a decision was only handed down by the Mannheim District Court last November 27, 2015.
According to Acacia, these standard-essential patents are being used by most mobile industry players like Samsung, Apple, Huawei, and Amazon. Unfortunately, HTC didn’t properly ask for a license, thus, the lawsuit. It’s not clear how HTC specifically used the patents on which of their phones but the handset maker lost this fight. This means less sales for this ailing company. We’re not certain if there are now talks between Acacia and HTC. All we know is that the latter is in danger.
We’ve lost count of all the bad news we’ve been hearing about HTC who saw a net loss last Q3. It seems that its move to focus on high-end phones and cut jobs to improve sales isn’t working either. Now, we’re curious to know if or how far those ads added to Blinkfeed and their goals for monetization have been met. What do you think?
VIA: WSJ
