It looks like the rumours were true indeed. Google has officially announced its acquisition of part of the HTC smartphone team. According to sources, the cooperation agreement between Google and HTC is worth around S$1.1 billion (about RM4.6 billion). This, however, isn’t the first time Google has been interested in striking a deal with a smartphone company; the company announced its buyout of Motorola for US$12.5 billion in 2011 (around RM52.5 billion) – before selling it for a lot less a few years later.
That aside, let’s get to the specifics of the Google – HTC agreement itself. Rick Osterloh, Google’s Senior Vice President of Hardware, stated that “a team of HTC talent will join Google has part of the hardware organisation.” Osterloh further added that the folks in this team consists of those who have worked with Google before for its Pixel smartphones.
Besides that, Google’s HTC smartphone team acquisition deal includes a non-exclusive license for HTC intellectual property as well. For those who aren’t aware, HTC has worked with Google plenty of times over the last few years. The Taiwanese smartphone company previously worked with Google to create some of its Nexus tablets and Pixel smartphones.
Regardless, it’ll probably take many months before we actually get to see whether this acquisition deal will be beneficial to Google’s hardware division in the long run. Hopefully, this deal doesn’t turn out to be a repeat of what happened between Google and Motorola a few years ago.
