HTC share zoom prior to Apple peace pact under investigation

You guys better have a crystal ball on you

The Taiwanese Stock Exchange has said that it will investigate why HTC's shares shot up a week before anyone knew the firm was going to settle its patent disputes with Apple.

HTC stock shot up the Taiwan maximum of 7 per cent yesterday after the announcement that it had signed a licensing agreement with Apple that put an end to all their patent squabbles. But the shares had been rising for a week before that as well, bringing the firm's total gains to 24 per cent since November 5.

“We have a long-standing surveillance system in place. When any stock, not only HTC, rises strongly for days or trades under an unusually high volume, we will analyse and look into what is going on,” said Michael Lin, senior executive vice president of Taiwan Stock Exchange, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

HTC and Apple announced over the weekend that they'd settled their differences with a ten-year global licensing agreement covering all present and future patents of both companies. Yesterday the shares rose on the news, but profit-taking today and the realisation that sorting things out with Apple isn't going to be a magic bullet for its problems has sent the stock back down by 16.5 per cent.

Like other mobile makers, HTC is finding it hard to compete with top Android manufacturer Samsung and Apple's Jesus mobes. Settling with Apple puts the firm in a good position with future phones, but it will still need to excite some stronger popularity for its mobiles. ®