Continuing their skyrocket beyond ODM-dom, HTC's buyout bid for Taiwanese Dopod has moved into the final stages. Having signed a memorandum of understanding, the only thing left in the estimated $150 million deal is approval from the Taiwanese government. Assuming HTC chairwoman and Dopod controlling shareholder Cher Wang, daughter of petrochemicals billionaire Y.C. Wang and wife of HTC boss-man Peter Chou, has enough influence to push this through (read: she does), then HTC is about to find themselves in direct competition with their own customers O2, i-mate and HP. HTC already confirmed their decision to self-brand phones in Europe, now the Dopod deal could result in HTC designs being sold exclusively under the Dopod branding outside of Europe. In fact, HTC has already cut ties with both O2 and i-mate in Australia, New Zealand, and India. So if Dopod's claim that HTC manufactures 80 percent of Windows Mobile phones is true, well, O2, i-mate, and HP best be looking for fresh design and manufacturing blood on the quick.

[Thanks, Ash]

In a not-so shocking development, handset trendsetter HTC is, according to president / CEO Peter Chou, considering making their devices more music friendly by increasing internal flash memory at the same time as cutting some fat, namely IR. (And really, how often do you use IR on a phone with USB and Bluetooth?) Most interesting, however, was Chou's statement that if an operator or reseller were to make it worth their while, HTC wouldn't have a problem getting in the Symbian device business: "We're not limited. We're not Microsoft, we can do anything." Unfortunately that hasn't yet come to pass, but it's not like an ODM like HTC shouldn't have a price when it comes to developing hardware for other platforms. We'd absolutely welcome some variety to the hardware running world's most prolific phone OS, and who knows, maybe sometime soon we'll see an HTC e61 killer.

[Via the::unwired]

It's only rather recently that smartphone manufacturer High Tech Computer Corp. became more than just another obscure OEM making reference devices, and BusinessWeek has an inside look at the factors that propelled HTC from unknown to Microsoft's go-to-guy. HTC was founded in 1997 by a group of refugee engineers from Digital Equipment Corp's Taiwanese subsidiary, and they immediately began to focus their efforts on handheld devices -- more specifically those that run one of the flavors of portable Windows. This early dedication to Microsoft operating systems (HTC was responsible for designing the first iPaqs), along with CEO Peter Chou's renowned attention to detail (he sent the Star Trek back three times before he was satisfied with its features) and the creative rein given to employees (whose titles include "Wizard" of this or "Magician" of that) made the company one of Redmond's favorite hardware partners. And even if HTC isn't yet a household name, investors have most definitely taken notice of its performance: the company's consistent double-digit growth (last year's $356 million in profits were triple the previous year's) have caused its stock to skyrocket more than 1000% since 2003.

[Thanks, Dave Z.]