Contradicting HTC's assurances a couple days ago that its Android phones are on track for later this year, an analyst at Global Equities research says that, according to his sources, HTC is "having structural problems to incorporate Google's demanded feature set" and "demanding a guaranteed minimum revenue surety from Google," indicating they don't have a lot of faith in Android phone sales. Consequently, it looks like their Android handset (probably Dream) might slip into next year after all.
Worse in the long-term is that the analyst's contacts tell him that developers are not exactly snapping up Google's SDK-they're too busy developing for the ten million other OSes out there, like Windows Mobile, Symbian, OS X and BlackBerry. It wouldn't be too surprising, given stuff like infrequent updates to the SDK, unless you're one of the super special developers with access to the privately updated one. The fact that bad news about Android keeps rearing its head isn't a good sign itself, since noise this persistent usually has a bit of signal embedded in it. [Barrons via Electronista]