DBTel

DBTEL Inc. (Chinese: 鼎創達; pinyin: Dǐng Chuàng Dá; formerly Chinese: 大霸電子; pinyin: Dàbà Diànzǐ) is a multinational telecommunications company based in Taipei, Taiwan. Founded in 1979 by Michael Mou, the company initially focused on cordless telephones. In the 1990s, DBTEL once took up 30% of the original equipment manufacturer market share for United States cordless phones. It later became an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for cell phones. Between 1998 and 2002, it made phones for Motorola and at one point was its largest manufacturer. The two companies ended their contract after legal disputes and weakness in the mobile phone market. After facing numerous challenges, DBTEL, which had unstable OEM sales, transformed from an OEM company into selling its own brand.

DBTEL became the first Taiwanese mobile phone producer to receive China's authorisation in 2000 to market branded cell phones and released its first branded mobile phone in the country in June 2001. By 2003, the company had sold five million of its phones that year in China. By number of mobile phones sold there that year, DBTEL was ranked number six in tier-one and tier-two cities and number four in other cities. With 85% of its revenue in China, DBTEL caused observers to worry that it was too reliant on the country. After the company faced competition from Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung in China and began running increasingly large deficits, it returned to making OEM sales in addition to selling its owned branded projects. DBTEL lost even more money after Taiwanese mobile phone competitors BenQ, OKWAP, and MiTAC Holdings all received the Chinese domestic sales rights in 2005. Analysts criticised DBTEL for repeatedly cutting back their financial forecasts which made investors lose their trust in the company.

In September 2005, the Taiwan Taipei District Prosecutors Office and other government agencies launched an investigation into insider trading at DBTEL. The investigators alleged that DBTEL had several times sold large amounts of shares before disclosing negative news that caused the stock prices to drop. The company's chairman was acquitted in one trial and convicted in a second one, with DBTEL changing its Chinese name after the controversy. In 2020, DBTEL applied to end the over-the-counter trading of its stock in November 2020 and acquired outstanding shares.