Remember when google bought Motorola and we thought the moto x line was going to become the new nexus? And then they sold to lenovo and it's kind of been down hill in terms of software updates. Let's see what google extracts out of HTC and then sells to someone else with this company.
When Google bought Motorola, Android was under serious assault from patent trolling, and the move looked to most people to be mainly defensive to quickly build up a defensive warchest. It's my impression that Google never intended to become a serious competitor in the handset market, perhaps for fear of stepping on the toes of its partners like Samsung, so it was content to let Motorola operate as an independent entity as if Google were a holding company.<p>This is just my personal opinion with no more knowledge than anyone else, but this HTC acquisition looks different than Motorola. It has the hallmarks of an acqui-hire, and which implies Google may no longer be content to just sit by as a cornucopia of OEMs ship commodity HW using off the shelf stuff and small tweaks, as that's never going to pull the market forward like Apple can do with vertical integration.
I think this is a good deal for nobody but those HTC engineers Google is going to hire, at least short term.<p>The $330M price is so low none of the HTC investors are going to make any money on it. HTC's mobile phone business has been unprofitable for years and Google won't make any money on it either.<p>Who knows maybe Google is planning on using the HTC business unit as a sort of an R&D lab for Android hardware, with no real plan on making it a traditionally profitable business.
This would have been great if Google had bought HTC about three years ago, back when it was making the HTC One M7. The company was struggling then, but still had plenty of prestige.<p>The problem now is that HTC has been sinking for so long that most of its famous engineers and personnel have long since jumped ship, so I'm not even sure Google will get much out of this acqui-hire. I would <i>assume</i> that none of this involves the Vive, as that seems too profitable right now for HTC to sell.<p>Don't get me wrong, if we got another HTC Google Play Edition phone using an HTC 10 successor (really don't like the U11, go back to the HTC One design template, please), that would be awesome. But I'm not holding my breath.
Google is also poaching quite a few Apple hardware engineers if my group of acquaintances is any evidence. I wonder if they're going full on into hardware production with tight integration like on the iPhone?
What's interesting about this is that HTC has a 10 year licensing deal with Apple that expires in 2022 [1]<p>Wonder if that deal came with a poison pill. I doubt Apple wants to be a counterparty to a mobile licensing deal with Google at this point.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2012/11/10/apple-htc-patent-settlement-10-year-license/" rel="nofollow">https://www.engadget.com/2012/11/10/apple-htc-patent-settlem...</a>
Makes sense. Own the hardware and the software and create a seamless experience. It's what Apple has been doing for years. Hopefully, they can pull that off if that's indeed the aim: I might consider a Google/HTC device if they pull it off and heck it might be running Fuschia and not android and that'd be compelling to me.
My biggest complaints about the Pixel line is are price and availability -- are these going to be addressed, or will Pixel phones continue to be overpriced and out of stock?<p>It seems to me that Google are intentionally sabotaging the success of their Pixel phone lineup. I would hate for the Nexus 6P to be my last Google phone.
Until Google is willing to truly support their Pixel/Nexus devices for more than 2 years, I'm not sure what difference this will really make. Not that Samsung and others are all that great, but I guess I had hope that Google might do more with their branded phones.
Mistakes are meant to be repeated. /s<p>Still, an open question is why would they feel the need to buy an exisiting company? Couldnt they simply recreate a hardware company from scratch with their resources? HTC is not exactly a world leader or some unique innovator here.
Serious question:<p>I have an iPhone 6+ -- and it is 90% great. (some UX choices suck on a bigger device, I cant hit certain buttons when one-handing the device)<p>I really like the essential....<p>I hear good things about the Pixels.<p>I would only up to the iPhone X for water resistence...<p>They are all nearly $1K<p>(I worked in Intel's game developer relations lab in the 90s when they were trying to prove that a <$1k computer was even possible (Celeron's with SIMD)...<p>Now its like a phreaking phone is going to be hitting/pushing the ~$1K mark....<p>Should I get a new phone, and if so, of those three, which would be best?
> Google has tried to buy its way into hardware twice before, albeit more expensively.<p>Google bought Danger which got Android. Motorola was a failure yes. So not twice but once.
They should instead buy a SoC company like mediatek and build own SoC competing apple AX series and Qualcomm 800 series with additional processing engine like neural engine etc.. also they should buy imagination technologies previous GPU technology supplier for apple which is already up for sale<p>This could greatly enhance android and they can start selling SoC along with software. If not they are dependent on Qualcomm to catch up with apple.
I'm surprised Google would be interested in "only 100 engineers" from HTC that I almost don't see the point. Are those engineers <i>that important</i> to Google's smartphone hardware efforts? Is it that much easier to acquihire them for $300 million than hire them one by one?
A lot of people are discussing this purchase as a way to bolstering Google's hardware R&D prowess, which I sort of don't understand: what are some of the most impressive phone innovations that came from HTC in the past 5 years?
From a selfish standpoint it would be nice for me if they could get back into phones and offer a mid range pixel (call it whatever) type device that gets regular security updates and etc.
Confirmed by HTC<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=15303272" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=15303272</a>
>Google will keep the HTC brand and take on about 100 HTC engineers<p>Only 100 engineers? They are not planning on retaining HTC's phone unit any much functional.