Google will not take a stake in the firm, but some HTC staff will join the Silicon Valley giant.

The Taiwanese company was once a major player in the smartphone market but has struggled to compete with the likes of Apple and Samsung.

Google expects the deal to close by early 2018, provided it gets the all clear from regulators.

Shares in HTC were suspended in Taiwan on Thursday.

Betting on hardware

The deal marks the latest move by Google to boost its hardware capabilities.

“It’s still early days for Google’s hardware business,” the firm’s senior vice-president of hardware Rick Osterloh said in a blog post on Google’s website.

Under the deal, Google will acquire a team of people who develop Pixel smartphones for the US company and receive a non-exclusive license for HTC’s intellectual property.

It builds on an existing partnership between the two tech companies.

“These future fellow Googlers are amazing folks we’ve already been working with closely on the Pixel smartphone line,” Mr Osterloh said.

According to HTC half their smartphone research and development team – about 2,000 people – will go to Google.

HTC manufactures Google’s smartphones, the Pixel and Pixel XL. The company will release updated version of the devices next month.

Analysis – Dave Lee, BBC North America technology reporter, San Francisco

Yesterday, within just a few hours, most of Apple’s millions upon millions of users were using the latest mobile operating system, having tapped on the prompt to download iOS 11.

Contrast that experience on Android, where the company’s impressive and innovative updates are greatly hampered as it can take months, sometimes years, for those features to filter to users.

Google knows this disconnect between its software and hardware is a massive problem. And so this curious deal with HTC, which falls short of the rumoured buyout, is about solving that problem. If it can have close control over key premium devices, it can be more ambitious with its software.

In some respects, this $1.1bn deal is like a good friend lending their pal a few quid to tide them over for a while. HTC needs Google’s money to keep going. And Google needs HTC’s expertise and manufacturing capability to remain competitive with its mobile devices.

Deal benefits

The deal marks Google’s second major foray into smartphone manufacturing. In 2011 Alphabet, then named Google, bought Motorola’s Mobility for $12.5bn, only to sell it on three years later.

Geoff Blaber from CCS Insight said while the HTC deal might “raise eyebrows” given Google’s history with Motorola, it will give the firm valuable design and engineering resources.

“The far bigger risk for Google would be to stand by and do nothing as hardware becomes an all-important means to an end for its core business,” Mr Blaber said.

But the big winner is HTC.

“It’s a much needed investment as HTC struggles to maintain its smartphone business and grow its early start in virtual reality,” he added.

HTC makes Vive, the VR headset favoured by Google, as the alternative Oculus Rift is owned by Facebook.

Vive is reportedly outselling Oculus Rift by a margin of nearly two-to-one, albeit with still modest numbers, and is recognised by many as the superior system.

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Source: BBC

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The Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer today unveiled two new smartphones in its new “U” lineup: “its first phablet in a while” HTC U Ultra and “aggressively priced” HTC U Play. Neither carry the 3.5mm jack, a trend that Apple gifted to the world.

Both the new smartphones follow “Liquid Design” language, a major departure from the aluminium unibody that older HTC smartphones carry. The “symmetric” smartphones have a curved glass body on both sides now with metal running along the edges.

“Hold it up and you’ll appreciate the phone’s symmetrical construction, and the way it transforms light as you turn it,” the company said at a media event Thursday.

The more powerful among the two, the HTC U Ultra, sports a 5.7-inch QHD (2560×1440 pixels) display with a secondary 2-inch display (of screen resolution 160×1040) decked on top of it. It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor and 4GB of RAM, and 64GB internal storage.

There’s a 3,000mAh battery to keep the phone afloat all day. The company says it will launch a limited number of HTC U Ultra smartphones with sapphire glass.

The HTC U Play sports a 5.2-inch full-HD (1920×1080 pixels) display. It features a MediaTek Helio P10 processor, and 3GB of RAM (with another variant carrying 4GB of RAM). The smartphone runs on a 2,500 mAh battery.

HTC is also focusing on “HTC Companion” skin, an AI-driven feature that studies user’s interactions to make the phone experience better and seamless, or so is the plan. For the HTC U Ultra, this works in conjunction with the secondary display. That 2-inch display will give you warnings about rain, for instance. Both smartphones run Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box.

On the photography front, both smartphones carry 16-megapixel with HTC UltraPixel technology rear cameras. For the selfie cam, the HTC U Ultra features a 12MP HTC UltraPixel shooter. The HTC U Play surprisingly carries the same 16MP UltraPixel on the front as well.

But, instead of a headphone jack, users will have to get on with the USB Type-C port. Speaking of which, the company also touted “HTC USonic” earphones, which will ship with the phones. The earphones “analyze your inner ears with a sonic pulse, and then adapt to you.”

Both the smartphones will be available in Brilliant Black, Cosmetic Pink, Ice White, and Sapphire Blue color variants. According to the listing on the website, the HTC U Ultra will retail at $749 but won’t ship before mid-March in the United States. The company is keeping the retail price and shipping info for the HTC U Play under wraps for now.

Will the new smartphones see enough takers? Analysts believe pricing the phones aggressively in some markets is the key. “When it comes to design HTC is still in the game,” Tarun Pathak, senior analyst at research firm Counterpoint, tells Mashable.

“Only thing it needs to do is play more aggressively in mid-end segment and leave premium market to partners like Google (which sells Google Pixel).”

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Source: Mashable

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