HTC said Friday that the company has acquired Dashwire, a Seattle firm that specializes in cloud services to synchronize smartphones.
HTC will utilize Dashwire's cloud sync and device set up products to extend the HTCSense.com cloud services it launched last year, the company said. Dashwire will serve as a subsidiary of HTC.
The new Dashworks platform will allows people to set up and synchronize their smartphones, as well as to access their content across devices.
HTC may be feeling pressure to offer a cloud service in the wake of Apple's iCloud, which launched as abet a site this past week. "Cloud services are key to delivering the promise of connected services to our customers," said Fred Liu, president of engineering and operations, HTC Corporation, in a statement. "People want access to all of their important content wherever they are on any device. The addition of Dashwire's cutting-edge sync services and deep mobile cloud experience strengthens our ability to deliver these services in a more powerful way."
"Dashwire was founded with the conviction that mobile cloud services would fundamentally change how people create, connect with and share their content across their devices," said Ford Davidson, founder and chief executive of Dashwire, in a statement. "HTC shares the mobile cloud computing vision with Dashwire which makes it exciting for us to be joining the HTC family to drive even more innovation in this space."
On a legal front, HTC has also been involved in ongoing litigation against Apple. Dashwire doesn't hold any patents, according to a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office search, but it has an application pending for a mobile device patent.
On July 6, HTC acquired S3 Graphics for $300 million in order to add it to its patent portfolio. The following week, however, Apple won a patent battle of its own when the International Trade Commission said HTC may have infringed on two Apple patents.
The patent war between Apple and HTC started in March 2010. At the time, Apple sued HTC for 20 instances of patent infringement, all dealing with various elements of the iPhone. "We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it," Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, said at the time. "We've decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."
In April, the ITC handed HTC and Nokia a victory in a key patent battle against Apple.
Additional reporting by Sara Yin.
Source:http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390569,00.asp?kc=PCRSS05039TX1K0000762
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