With record profits mounting up on a quarterly basis, it looks like HTC is planning on spreading its wings a little. HTC has announced that they have plans to acquire graphics chip maker S3 Graphics for $300 million from Via Technologies in an effort to strengthen its patent portfolio. The acquisition of S3 Graphics would give HTC full control over 235 patents which mainly cover graphics visualization technologies. A few of the patents within the portfolio have already been used to successfully sue Apple based on the way their products compress images.
Out hope is that HTC uses these new patents to simply increase the quality of their products or license them to any parties that may be interested in them. Compared to most other manufacturers, HTC’s name is still pretty clean. Let’s hope they don’t muck it up by going out and suing other manufacturers in hopes of making a few extra bucks.
I wouldnt interpret to much into it. HTC Cofounder Cher Wang is the wife of VIA Technologies CEOs Wen Chi Chen