The HTC One Mini went on sale in the UK in August, but today a judge in that country has banned the sale of the Android smartphone because it violated a patent belonging to Nokia. Bloomberg reports that Judge Richard Arnold ruled that chips inside the HTC One Mini were found to be using Nokia"s patented technology.
The story says that the sales ban officially commences on Friday, December 6th. However, the judge delayed placing an injunction against the smartphone until HTC can file an appeal to today"s ruling. While HTC has yet to offer an official comment, Nokia said in a statement that HTC has agreed not to import any more of the One Mini devices into the UK pending the appeal. The smartphone is a 4.3 inch version of the larger 4.7 inch HTC One, with a 1280x720 display, a dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage.
Today"s verdict is the latest piece of bad news for the Taiwan-based HTC, which recently announced it would try to launch new and cheaper smartphones in order to become profitable again, rather than compete in the higher end market.
Source: Bloomberg | Image via HTC