It had been expected that the patent lawsuit taken out by Apple against HTC back in March might lead to a dip in fortunes, but the latest financials from the firm show its fortunes faired better than expected in the first quarter of the year.

Indeed, HTC enjoyed its first year-over-year growth since the middle of last year, with revenue hitting $1.19 billion in the first three months of 2010 – up 19.3 percent from the same quarter last year.

Things are expected to get even better, also, with HTC itself predicting it will ship 4.5 million handsets globally during its second quarter.

Growing confidence

"Our scale growth strategy is based upon a full product portfolio not just a specific view of a single product behaviour," the company said in a statement.

"It is misleading to evalucate HTC growth and financial performance by mid to low end product only."

HTC considers the fact it's backing many different horses one of its strengths, with Android support set to be topped up with a Windows Phone 7 handset "before the end of the year".

Going Google

At the moment, however, it's iPhone's perceived main rival Android that's leading the charge.

"HTC is very pleased to see successfully Android ramping globally as of today," the company continued.

"We started seeing our Android momentum picking up from beginning of 2010. The intial 2009 Android portfolio has proved to deliver better sell-through as well as longer product life cycles, and we our confident our 2010 Android portfolio will drive momentum around the world.

The fact the firm appears to be riding the Apple storm will no doubt please those at the top, and the company appears keen that Apple is aware of its success, saying in a matter of fact manner that, while the legal action against it continues, HTC has suffered "no immediate impact on our products, business and customers".

[source: Businessweek]