Google has announced the completion of its $1.1 billion deal to buy a large slice of HTC’s hardware business. The acquisition was announced back in September 2017 but now it has passed the requisite approvals and is finalized. Beyond the transfer of over 2,000 engineers from HTC — that’s around one-fifth of HTC’s engineering team — Google will also receive a non-exclusive license for HTC’s intellectual property.
HTC is retaining its Vive VR division and it will continue to make its own smartphones, the company confirmed last year. Most obviously, the deal boosts Google’s hardware game significantly by handing a portion of HTC’s own smartphone development team, many of whom worked on Google’s Pixel hardware (which was outsourced to HTC) and other HTC devices which, while much lauded, didn’t sell in huge volumes.
Secondly, it gives Google a vast new engineering base in Taipei, Taiwan, where HTC is located. That makes the location the largest engineering site for Google in Asia Pacific, and it is likely to be the source of new products from the company going forward.
