[Off-topic] MikeChannon:
It may appear that hTC have taken an unusual approach to marketing and promotion, but it is certainly not an unusual approach in business terms. In fact the concept of manufacturing goods to order for suppliers who have ready made and recognised brands is remarkably common. Of course most customers never really question whether the product is actually made by the brand name that appears on the case.

Many years ago when I did TV / radio repairs it was not unusual to find identical ocircuitboards and layout insude TVs that were sold under dozens of different brands. I'd say of around 50 brands I'd find maybe only 10 different circuits internally. The same is obviously true of hTC phones = many brands but all made by hTC but with different branded cases. This can be a good marketing strategy and is comparatively risk free if the deals with the brand companies are for fixed volume sales. If you can sell 10,000 units, but you don't have to market them or sell them to the public, that is a very stable and profitable position. Look at all the brands of flat screen panel TVs in the shops (dozens of them) but actually there are only a handful of manufacturers and most folk will never have heard of them. That situation nearly always changes though, once the product becomes a top seller. The risk of selling directly to the public is then greatly reduced - the high profile brand names having driven the initial public desire for the product.

Keep in mind too, that hTC were amongst the first to sell PDA/Phones with WM. A high risk position would have been to market these products through an unknown company. Far better to sell via high profile brand names. Of course, as these products have become more popular, it is now far less risky for hTC to sell direct to the public. This is of course what they have done in the past two years or so; the product is more popular and they now sell direct.

They have commenced TV advertising following the very obvious success of the iphone. It must have upset them greatly, to see Apple advertising as new products, phones which struggled to provide the functionality that hTC phones have had for years. But Apple do it so well and MOST importantly they market to the GENERAL public, not just geeks and business users. Riding on the success of the iPhone, I believe it is now felt by hTC, that they can also chase the popular, general public, market.

This does not of course mean good news for XDA-Developers (their unofficial support base). It may in fact mean that the whole process of support and development becomes more official - teams of paid developers etc etc. This could mean that the old voluntary developer type forum becomes something they no longer wish to unofficially support. We will need to wait to see whether success brings more work and more to develop by XDA-Developers or on the contrary; a clamping down by hTC and M$.

Remember, mass market success is not about small groups of geeky developers sitting at home and posting on the net, it is about applications that will be marketed and officially supported and therefore controlled by hTC and M$.

Mike

PS

... hTC are a highly successful company - in fact phenomenal success in just a few years - I wish I had bought shares. We can all point at Apple's success with the iPhone, but really the idea of licencing your produts for use on devices made by other people is a better more profitable model. Look at how much more successful M$ has been than Apple. That is because their software is licenced for use on ANY PC made by anybody. It essentially means you get lots of other people to sell your product for you. (it almost does not matter if folk have heard of you or not) Of course your product must work well - and if competition comes along (eg Apple), you MUST improve or die.