HTC Mulling Plans To Launch Own OS

HTC Corp., the Taiwan based smartphone manufacturer, is planning to develop its own mobile phone operating system, with the intention of giving direct competition to Google and Microsoft, which have flooded the markets with smartphones running their operating systems.

As of now, all the smartphones manufactured by the company are running on the Windows Mobile OS developed by Microsoft and the popular Android OS that has been developed by search engine giant Google.

The reason HTC is looking into the prospect of developing its own OS is to reduce its dependence of outside developers.

Expressing his views on the idea of HTC coming up with its own OS, Steven Tseng of RBS Asia Ltd told Business Week that “If you look at the successful smartphone players, like Apple and Research in Motion, a reason for their success is that they have their own platform. The negative is the amount of resources they’d need to allocate.”

Meanwhile, several industry experts have named HTC, the maker of the popular Hero smartphone, among the potential contenders lining up to acquire ailing smartphone maker Palm Inc., which is struggling to hold to its market share that has been eaten up by Apple's iPhone and Research in Motion's BlackBerry.