After weeks (months, and years) of speculation, HTC has announced that its “Powered by HTC” R&D division — the team behind Google’s Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones — will be purchased by Google for $1.1 billion in cash. According to HTC’s CFO Peter Shen, this will mean about half — yes, half — of the 4,000 people in his company’s R&D team will be joining Google, but he emphasized that HTC will continue developing its own range of smartphones, including its next flagship product. The agreement also grants Google a non-exclusive license for a large part of HTC’s intellectual property. The deal is expected to be approved and closed by early 2018.
Curious about what all of this means? You could do worse than to check out our guide to the subject from last week.
“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,” HTC co-founder and CEO Cher Wang said in a statement.
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