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Google Buys Part of HTC's Smartphone Team For $1.1 Billion (betanews.com)
BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: Today, a deal finally happens, but Google didn't buy HTC outright. Strangely, as the deal is laid out, the search giant has seemingly bought HTC employees. Yes, for $1.1 billion, the search giant has sort of purchased human beings -- plus it gets access to some intellectual property. HTC gets a much-needed big influx of cash. "Google and HTC Corporation today announced a definitive agreement under which certain HTC employees -- many of whom are already working with Google to develop Pixel smartphones -- will join Google. HTC will receive $1.1 billion in cash from Google as part of the transaction. Separately, Google will receive a non-exclusive license for HTC intellectual property (IP). The agreement is a testament to the decade-long strategic relationship between HTC and Google around the development of premium smartphones," says HTC.
What do you think, when Google bought the HTC employees, do you think they made them strip naked and then had an auction?
Tech workers, you have no idea how precarious your world is. You may think you're on top of the whole capitalism game, but when push comes to shove, you're going to get the shit end of the feudalism stick like everyone else who works for a living.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well, Google is in for some mass firings soon. There's going to be a huge culture clash between Google's far left SJW culture and Taiwan's meh don't care culture. If you think James Damore was bad (and he wasn't, the man was super reasonable, he was trying to help when Google's diversity classes told him they couldn't figure out why the company wasn't more diverse) then all these new Taiwanese employees are going to be a nightmare. You think these Taiwanese are going to go to the gay pride parade? People have been fired from Google for declining to attend. I bet Google learned from the Googlegate fiasco, and instead of highly public firings, will do quiet ones instead. Still, they're going to lose capable people due to the fact that the SJW culture sounds insane to people raised outside the bubble.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Selling Android phones that can be upgraded with patches has no future for a phone vendor. Nokia learned this when they lost the struggle trying to go from a market which was "Want a new feature buy a new phone" to a market of "Want a new feature, click update".
Long term revenue from phone comes from owning the platform. That means monetizing from distribution of content or payment processing.
Samsung is the exception as they produce almost (in not completely) all components of the phone and therefore have a much higher profit margin from the phone itself. In addition, sales of components to nearly all other phone makers covers most of their internal R&D costs.
HTC is little more than a reseller trying to scrape what they can off of each sale which leaves them struggling in a market where they are forced to make phones with 2-3 year life spans of high quality while competing against pricing from companies who produce most of the components themselves. It's a clearly doomed business model.