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Google Is Apparently Ready To Buy Smartphone Maker HTC (cnbc.com)
According to a Taiwanese news outlet called Commercial Times, Google is in the final stages of acquiring all or part of smartphone maker HTC. CNBC reports: The report seems fishy, since Google has already been down this road, but there's a reason why Google might be interested in HTC. The Taiwanese company builds the Google Pixel, which means it could be a good fit for Google as it continues to cater to consumers with its "Pixel" smartphone brand. Here's where it sounds off base: Google acquired Motorola Mobility and then sold it off just a couple of years later. Why repeat that move? Commercial Times said HTC's poor financial position and Google's desire to "perfect [the] integration of software, content, hardware, network, cloud, [and] AI," is the driving force behind Google's interest. The news outlet said Google may make a "strategic investment" or "buy HTC's smartphone R&D team" which suggests that the VR team would exist as its own.
If they buy HTC to make the Pixel, the acronym would be HTCP which sounds a bit like HTTP.
#DeleteFacebook
Google acquired Motorola Mobility and then sold it off just a couple of years later. Why repeat that move?
First, Motorola was a patent play. Google gained much protection by buying the patent portfolio.
Second, Google's tried the 3rd party vendor route and gotten shit products out of it and continues watching Apple reap 95% of the mobile profit. Pixel was an attempt by Google to create a realistic competitor that would actually help them. Now that the Pixel appears realistic, Google needs more control to keep up with Apple who is ahead in many areas. (Hint, there's a reason besides fanboism that Apple has 95% of the profits)
Google buying HTC outright will have another immediate effect - Samsung's profits. Unless Samsung takes a page out of the same book and creates their own OS dev team and branches Android into their own offering.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
They will take the best engineers, patents and then leave it for dead. Just like most of Googles acquisitions. Google should buy Slashdot, since it is Google shill central anyway.
It would be interesting to see how Google would take HTC forward if this turns out to be true. The problem these days is that "journalists" do very little actual fact checking. A rumor winds up as a story on some sleepy site where it's then picked up by more mainstream media outlets who also don't bother fact checking it.
>A software maker purchasing another phone maker.
*looks at camera* "Here we go again!"
*laugh track* *credit roll*
Very interesting.
I'm gonna stick in your butthoal.
The Nexus 4 was very good. The Nexus 5 was okay, too. But the subsequent Nexus and Pixel phones have been less than ideal. The later Nexus phones were physically too large to be convenient and comfortable to use. The Pixel phones are slightly too large, and also way the fuck too expensive.
I think it's interesting how the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 phones received a lot of attention, and were highly praised by their users. But the Pixel phones haven't gotten anywhere near as much attention, probably because they're too inconvenient or out of reach, price wise, for most users.
Google, this is what we want in a smart phone:
1. A reasonable size. About the size of the Nexus 4, or at most the Nexus 5.
2. A reasonable price. The $300-$400 range is good. Trade off some CPU and GPU performance, if necessary, to achieve that price point. Aim for the 90% of normal people who don't want to spend $800 or more on a phone. Really, Google, you make your money off of our data and information, right? So don't make a profit on the phone, or perhaps even take a small loss. You'll likely make up for it in the additional data you collect about us as we use Android phones instead of iPhones.
3. Keep offering updates after more than 2 or 3 years, especially when phones can last 5 years or more and are still perfectly usable. It's unpleasant to stop getting updates so soon. Support these phones for at least 6 years. Make it easy for Android users to run the latest version of the OS on older phones, even if some functionality may be limited, so app developers don't have to support 5 or more different Android versions just to get decent coverage of the market!
4. Don't try to be Apple. Keep prices reasonable. Keep the UI usable. Make the phones much less locked down.
5. Don't assume that everybody is going to use their phones to watch YouTube videos. Some of us just use it for making calls, receiving text messages, checking the time, checking our email and browsing the web. We don't need extreme GPU capabilities or excessively detailed screens, especially if it compromises the price and battery life of the device.
Google, please just give us a well-balanced Android phone that's convenient to hold and use, that's reasonably affordable, and that will continue to get updates beyond a couple of years!
From what I can tell, the reason is that Apple hoodwinks people into paying a premium; a device from Apple is a status symbol.
Google should buy Google, so they can shut it down in a few years.
Make more phones like that.
They had Motorola. Did fuck all with it.
The Google purchase is for the unprofitable phone part only - HTC is looking to keep the Vive part of the company, from what we've been hearing.
In a few years they can buy HTC for a bargain price.
Having played with Google Glass I have to say it's pretty cool in many respects, there's certainly some first and some potential - but it's not much. By the time you're done with the new it's a creeper cam with head-mounted caller ID and an awkward Bluetooth headset.
HTC's V.R. team has a great head-mounted video game display that's not useful for all the time / daily wear.
Put these two together and see if you can make something genuinely useful in a real-world environment without making the wearers look like glass-holes.
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Sounds more like rumours spread around by shareholders attempting to keep the market value up while they cash out before HTF folds.
Hey HTC support! Remember when I & others told you that abandoning support for your phones mere months after suddenly EOLing them was going to get you removed from everyone's supplier lists?
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
my sides
... of reference phone options at Project Fi. At one time, the HTC One was the Fi reference phone, and I had one, and it was pretty good, but not nearly as good as what they put together with the Motorola Nexus... my current handset. I'm actually pretty happy to get this news. I hope they're able to evolve the Pixel line forward and continue to demonstrate what pure Android can do.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Every user eventually figures out that you have a terrible disadvantage if you buy hardware with prebundled OS. And in the regrettable situation that you have to settle for doing that, even if it's prebundled it shouldn't be made by the same company. (Don't get me wrong: it's still going to suck if your PC comes with OS installed, but at least it won't suck as much as if the hardware maker is also the same as the OS maker.)
If Google does this, the HTC-branded hardware won't be worth buying. It'll be just another iOS or Playstation, locked down and user-hostile.
The mere rumor of this, ought to be negatively impacting HTC sales.
Google basically paid $10B for Motorola's patents. (Bought the company for $12B, sold it for $2B sans patents). I imagine the same is basically true for HTC. But the rationale is different this time. The patent wars are basically over now, so Google is likely be buying HTC's patents to keep them out of the hands of someone else.
Google sold Motorola at a $10 billion loss! Motorola had arguably better hardware design teams and arguably similar manufacturing capability as HTC. I've love to hear the argument from Google execs as to how and what they will do differently this time. And yes, I know Motorola was a patent play, but that still doesn't answer my question of how they will fix the mismanagement of the hardware teams.
My daughter bought a Pixel. It's pretty.
It has hardware flaws (easily cracked board), crashes.
That makes a great device for $600
Maybe they can fix the HTC garbage. My other daughter has an LG Nexus, that's a decent product for 1/2 the price.
If they buy HTC, good luck.
Rosewill/Newegg or Intel or Kingston or Supermicro [,,,] that's the most maintainable, longest-lasting, best-value computer that you can get. No Dell or Apple customer will ever have it so good, so easy, so dependable, so long-lasting, or so reliable.
If phones were like that, everyone would be happy instead of sad.
I searched the brand names you provided, and most of them appear to be servers and desktops. True, servers and desktops can be like that. But in order for phones to have a chance of being like that, laptops first have to be like that.
Great. So now both major VR options, Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, will be owned by the greatest threats to our privacy ever.
People got all pissed off and turned their backs on the Oculus once Facebook bought them, I hope for the sake of fairness and consistency that they do the same thing to the Vive if Google buys it.
Thankfully other alternatives are out there but it sucks to have both major VR sets owned by the two biggest public branches of the NSA.