HTC is battling against Apple over patents, and Google’s purchase last year of raises questions about whether HTC will have full and timely access to Android upgrades, which it depends on for its best-selling phones. February sales were off 40 percent from the same period the previous year, and analysts expect HTC’s profits this year to fall 13 percent, to $1. Chou bought his way into Dre’s inner circle last year when HTC paid $300 million for a 51 percent stake in Beats Electronics, the maker of high-end audio gear founded by Dre and Interscope-Geffen-A&M Chairman Jimmy Iovine. Instead, Beats’s technology—both hardware and software—will help make listening to music on an HTC smartphone a “unique and differentiated and awesome” experience, he says. As its stock price and market share have crumbled over the past year, HTC has invested more than $420 million in companies specializing in...

Source: BusinessWeek