HTC Builds Its Brand

Taiwan's HTC was once a mostly-anonymous contract manufacturer, making PDAs (remember them?) for Compaq (remember them?). Today, it's gained prominence as the manufacturing brand behind the popular Android smart phones, which rely on Google's operating system.

Sales are going up, as are marketing costs, due to HTC's plans to maintain a world-class brand. Despite supply shortages, HTC forecasts 4Q global sales of as many as 8.5 million handsets, driven in part by the company's new Win 7 phones, not just Android OS handsets.

Want to see HTC's online brand-building activities? Click on its YouTube channel (nearly 21 million views to date), Twitter account (nearly 300,000 followers), Facebook page (which 282,000 people like), or its regular Web page.