HTC is considering joining the ranks of handset makers with their own mobile OS, according to the company's CFO.
In an interview with Bloomberg, CFO Cheng Hui-ming said an HTC-developed OS would enable the company to reduce its reliance on outside developers.
But he added that a few conditions were required to justify having its own OS, and the vendor was still debating whether to take the plunge.
HTC has not put a timeframe on deciding whether to develop or acquire its own platform, he said.
Cheng refused to be drawn on whether the Taiwanese vendor was considering buying Palm, which yesterday revealed it was putting itself up for sale.
Acquiring Palm would net HTC Palm's WebOS smartphone operating system, but achieve little in terms of scale, as the platform only holds a 0.7% share of the total smartphone market, according to Gartner.
The handset and mobile OS markets are converging from both ends. As well as multiple handset players developing their own operating systems, OS developers Microsoft and Google having both recently moved into the handset production game.
HTC is currently the world's largest producer of phones using the Windows Mobile platform, and was the first to release an Android phone, the HTC G1.