Taiwan-based cell phone maker HTC Wednesday was credited as the source of 80 percent of mobile phones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software.
“We have sold more than 40 million HTC Windows mobile phones around the world,” HTC CEO Peter Chou reportedly told a Mobile World Conference audience.
HTC, along with producing phones carrying its own brand, makes handsets for carriers AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, Vodafone and Orange.
Earlier, Andy Lees, an executive of Microsoft’s mobile business. told the same Barcelona, Spain audience 50 million Windows mobile devices were sold since 2003.
The comment about HTC being the main supplier of Windows Mobile devices seemed to dispute Microsoft claims its Windows Mobile software is used by a wide variety of device makers.
Over time, the Windows Mobile marketshare has fallen to around 12 percent from a high of 23 percent in 2004.
A growing number of Windows Mobile customers are moving to other handset platforms. Palm’s new Pre touchscreen handset will use the company’s webOS rather than Windows Mobile.
Microsoft may be targeting Google’s Android platform as its most pressing rival, according to other reports.
Despite a number of Microsoft partners (LG, Samsung, Motorola, HTC, etc.) adopting Android as the platform for their upcoming phones, no Google-inspired mobile phones appeared at the tradeshow.
However, more attention was given Microsoft’s announcement that LG planned 50 different Windows Mobile smartphones by 2012.
“Without that flag waving distraction, someone in the tech media might have noticed the fact that the top three Windows Mobile vendors (Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Palm) are scrambling away from the platform as quickly as possible,” wrote Daniel Eran Dilger of Roughly Drafted.
