HTC chief executive Peter Chou says the company is happy with its patent settlement with Apple, but calls the media estimates that has HTC paying the Cupertino company $6 – $8 per phone “very, very, wrong.”
“I think that these estimates are baseless and very, very wrong. It is a outrageous number, but I’m not going to comment anything on a specific number. I believe we have a very, very happy settlement and a good ending,” said Chou at a KDDI Corp product launch in Tokyo.
Chou was responding to a question about media reports that HTC will pay Apple $6 to $8 per Android phone as part of a patent settlement that dropped all litigation between the two companies and led to the signing of a cross-patenting agreement that runs for 10 years. After the agreement was made public, media speculation ran rampant as to how much HTC would pay Apple per phone as part of the deal.
Apple first sued HTC in 2010. The lawsuit was the first shot in Apple’s legal battle against manufacturers using Google’s Android operating system in their handsets. The fight has expanded in recent times to include Samsung and Google’s own Motorola Mobility division.
