Yesterday VRFocus reported that HTC had halted sales of its shares with a big announcement expected today. That’s now happened with the company entering into an agreement with Google which will see certain HTC employees move to the tech giant in a $1.1 billion USD agreement.
The deal looks to be mainly focused around the Pixel smartphone as most of the HTC employees are already at Google to work on its new range of Pixel devices. HTC will receive the $1.1 billion in cash from Google as part of the transaction, while Google will also receive a non-exclusive license for HTC intellectual property (IP).
“As a pioneer of the smartphone market, we are very proud of our history of innovation. Our unmatched smartphone value chain, including our IP portfolio, and world-class talent and system integration capabilities, have supported Google in bolstering the Android market,” said Cher Wang, Chairwoman and CEO of HTC in a statement. “This agreement is a brilliant next step in our longstanding partnership, enabling Google to supercharge their hardware business while ensuring continued innovation within our HTC smartphone and VIVE virtual reality businesses. We believe HTC is well positioned to maintain our rich legacy of innovation and realize the potential of a new generation of connected products and services.”
The transaction is likely to close in early 2018 and with that cash HTC will be bolstering its smartphone business, working on it next flagship device having released the U11 earlier this year. And of course there’s the HTC Vive and its virtual reality (VR) business which the company will continue to grow.
“HTC has been a longtime partner of Google and has created some of the most beautiful, premium devices on the market,” said Rick Osterloh, Senior Vice President of Hardware at Google. “We’re excited and can’t wait to welcome members of the HTC team who will be joining Google to fuel further innovation and future product development in consumer hardware.”
For further details on Google’s new Pixel phones keep an eye out for its next event on 4th October. As ever, keep reading VRFocus for the latest VR and AR news.
via Mint VR