Smarthouse reports: "Mobile phone company HTC is set to launch a brand new phone touch phone that will take on the Apple iPhone and the new Pre offering from Palm claims a senior executive of Telstra." Telstra staff say:
"We have seen both and we believe that the new HTC phone will be a real competitor to the iPhone and the Pre which at this stage looks nice but is still not delivered to market."
Taiwan-based HTC already makes the Touch and Touch HD phones, which are based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile. However, it has got into the Android market by manufacturing the first G1 "googlephone" so it makes sense to develop -- or redevelop -- its own software on top that. Indeed, from HTC's point of view, it would make sense to offer the same TouchFlo interface on all its phones, regardless of operating system … and then refuse to share it with anyone else.
Both Android and Palm's WebOS are based on open Linux. It will be interesting to see how "de facto proprietary" they turn out to be in reality.
