More Light On Nokia And HTC Microphone Snafu

It was yesterday when we brought you word on how Nokia picked up a preliminary injunction against Taiwan-based HTC in the Netherlands for the infringement of a microphone part that was meant to be manufactured and used exclusively in Nokia devices only, only to have it make its way to the HTC One. Well, 24 hours is a long time in football (soccer just in case you were wondering) and politics, and I guess you can more or less say the same thing about the world of technology. It was yesterday when the only information we knew was that STMicroelectronics overstepped its authority in selling these parts to HTC so that it could be used in the HTC One.

STMicroelectronics has since stepped forward to share that they have a 12-month exclusive contract with Nokia for that particular part, with the first seeing action in the Lumia 720, hence the microphones in the Lumia 920 must make use of a different component. STMicroelectronics claimed to have misinterpreted the details, saying that they thought the exclusivity was just half a year, which obviously had passed. Sounds fishy, don’t you think so? Didn’t their legal department go through the contract carefully? Poor HTC, they will now need to find an alternative for future HTC One microphone production.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: HTC, Nokia