Chapter 423 In the Name of Glory

Even so, because in 2005, smartphones were only in their infancy. Taking the Chinese market as an example, so far this year, smartphones have accounted for less than 5% of the entire mobile phone market...

Even in Europe and the United States, where smartphones are used more frequently, the smartphone penetration rate is not high because their mobile phone user base is large.

It should be noted that the smartphones currently manufactured by HTC are still mainly based on the Windows Mobile system.

At this time, the main operating systems in the smartphone market include Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm and Linux. Among them, Symbian has the largest market share. Although Windows Mobile's market share is gradually increasing thanks to Microsoft's technology and financial resources, it is still far less than Symbian.

Therefore, even in the entire smartphone field, HTC's market share is not high. In the end, they still needed to lead the touch screen smartphone era after the launch of IPHone and launch the first Android phone to enter the ranks of mainstream mobile phone brands.

Now HTC is listed on the stock market of Taiwan Province with a market value of less than US$800 million. It can be said that under such circumstances, the biggest obstacle for GII Fund to acquire this company is Wang Xuehong, the chairman of HTC.

If Wang Xuehong waits until HTC launches Android phones before acquiring it, it might be really difficult to take over. After all, when he sees the dawn of the brand and has the support of his family, he will definitely not let go.

But now...

After GII Fund raised the acquisition price to $1 billion, offering a 20% premium to a company that mainly engaged in OEM, it first convinced the other two investors of HTC. Finally, Wang Xuehong also gave in under such circumstances. HTC's board of directors approved GII Fund's acquisition offer for them and would delist after GII Fund fully acquired them...

In fact, HTC at that time did have its own brand. Some people may have heard of this brand, which is "Dopod".

On July 1, 2002, HTC Corporation and VIA Technologies Corporation jointly invested to establish Dopod International Corporation, with its headquarters in Taiwan Province and its factory in Hsinchu.

The company's main business is product design, marketing and customer service for mobile phones and handheld devices, with operations in Taiwan, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.

Afterwards, in order to cooperate with HTC's brand layout in mainland China, Wang Xuehong invested and founded Dopod Communications Co., Ltd. in his own name. Its headquarters was set up in Shanghai, its production base was located in Jiangcheng, and its products were sold specifically to the mainland Chinese market.

Subsequently, Dopod obtained a mobile phone license in mainland China and officially sold Dopod's own brand of smart phones.

After acquiring HTC, GII Fund bought back all Dopod shares in Taiwan Province and mainland China, as well as sales channel assets, for US$50 million and integrated them into HTC.

After the acquisition, GII Fund renamed HTC to Honor Electronics, and Dopod will continue to operate as their subsidiary.

Uh, sorry Huawei, you should come up with another name for your mobile phone sub-brand in the future...

At this time, Honor Electronics' investors, including Wang Xuehong, had already left the company, while the original company's CEO Zhou Yongming continued to serve as Honor Electronics' CEO. GII Fund also poached Motorola executive Dick Clayton to serve as Honor Electronics' COO...

Currently, Honor Electronics is carrying out corporate integration after the acquisition, and Finn Hudson, CEO of GII Fund, came to Yanjing with another mission.

"I have already met with the chairman of Huaxia Electronics (CEC) and will discuss with him the joint acquisition of Philips..."

Finn Hudson said:

"Huaxia Electronics is indeed very interested in this proposal, and facing the decreasing market share in the mobile phone market, Philips is also interested in selling its mobile phone business..."

Yes, the next plan of GII Fund is to acquire the mobile phone business of Philips.

However, they were not the only ones to make the acquisition. Although the market share of Philips mobile phones is getting lower and lower, the only thing they can boast about now is their concept of "super long standby"...

But even so, if you want to acquire Philips' entire mobile phone business, you will need at least $2.5-3 billion in funds...

In fact, Barron, who knows the future development of Philips mobile phones, has little interest in Philips' mobile phone business, whether it is their "Philips" brand or its R&D and production departments.

The only thing that prompted him to make this acquisition was the nearly 20,000 mobile phone-related patents owned by Philips.

You know, in Baron's previous life, why did HTC, which was the first to launch Android phones and became popular, decline later?

The reasons are complicated, but one of the main reasons is that HTC, which entered the market later, was involved in many lengthy patent infringement lawsuits.

This includes the patent infringement lawsuit filed by Apple against HTC in 2010. This lawsuit can be said to have dealt a heavy blow to HTC!

It is worth mentioning that HTC, which became the "vanguard" of the Android camp at the time, also turned to Google, the owner of the original Android company, for help when facing Apple's patent war.

After all, when facing this kind of patent war, in addition to facing the lawsuit directly, there is another way, which is to find the other party's "pain points" from your own patent library, and then exchange patents to reach an off-site settlement. Many old mobile phone manufacturers used this method to obtain relevant patent authorizations from Apple when they entered the field of touch screen smartphones.

Because Apple was also a "new player" in the mobile phone market at the time, it might have enough patents for smartphones, but it could not get around some patents for traditional mobile phones, and often exchanged the right to use patents with those manufacturers.

At that time, HTC thought that Google had a lot of patents, but it didn't expect that Google, as a "new player", only had more than 200 US patents...

For this reason, Google Group later began to purchase patents everywhere in order to expand the Android camp. For example, when they acquired Motorola in 2011, they were targeting the more than 18,000 patent assets owned by the other party.

HTC originally started out as an OEM and does not have many relevant patents. This time, it acquired Philips' mobile phone business in order to use the massive mobile phone-related patents owned by Philips, an "old player", to reserve ammunition for the future of Honor Electronics.

The reason for cooperating with Huaxia Electronics is that Huaxia Electronics is an important partner of Philips' mobile phone business.