Customs slowly letting HTC handsets into the US, can't say which ones
Still waiting for your HTC handset to make its way through customs? Ratchet your hopes just a smidge higher, because the company says it's making progress. “Some models have gone through inspection and been released …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the next beat of a dispute that started before the holidays: after the ITC patent ruling went against it, HTC began retesting new models in December 2011 and its shares jumped on the prospect of a workaround. What changed by May 2012 is that US Customs started physically releasing inspected units — but HTC says it cannot identify which ones, so retailers and carriers still don't know what inventory will land when.
The story travelled unusually wide for a logistics update — CNET, The Verge, AppleInsider, Android Central and the Taipei Times all picked it up — because the affected flagships (the One X on AT&T, the Evo 4G LTE) were mid-launch-cycle, and because HTC had just filed a second ITC complaint against Apple, keeping both companies' US supply lines hostage to the same agency.
First-order effects
- HTC's US launch window for the One X and Evo 4G LTE stays uncertain day-to-day: with no confirmation of which models cleared inspection, the company and its carrier partners cannot promise stock or commit marketing spend against specific ship dates.
Second-order effects
- AT&T's One X launch carries compounded risk — the device already drew criticism over its locked bootloader-style restrictions at launch, and an unpredictable customs pipeline gives buyers another reason to defect to competitors whose handsets face no exclusion hold.
Third-order effects
- If ITC exclusion orders keep being enforced through case-by-case customs inspections, import clearance itself becomes a competitive weapon in the US smartphone patent wars — pushing vendors like HTC to design around patents before shipping rather than argue afterward.
The trend: US smartphone competition is increasingly adjudicated at the border, with ITC rulings and customs enforcement deciding which handsets reach shelves while the courtroom fight continues.