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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.
They've sold about 3+ million of those pixel phones I read, so we're looking at $300 per handset sold.
IMHO, the issue with Google is they're playing catchup with their own Android OEMs and that has a lot to do with Pichai. I once watched him do a presentation on ChromeOS and he didn't have a vision, he was just sort of wishy washy on the direction, saying stuff like "well maybe extend this, and change that". Since then, Google has twiddled with technology adding features its OEMs already added.
My current beef with him is that Android is still total crap on the tablets, the bad reviews of the Pixel C's software from 3 years ago, are still valid today, years later, and he's led Google to make a poor mans Windows laptop clone, merging Chrome OS and Android, as if anyone with an Android product wanted a whole layer of crap around the outside of Android and a trackpad and mouse interface.
I see rumours of a 2 in 1, what's actually needed is an Android leader making a proper tablet. Fuck chromeOS, fuck the WIMP system on a tablet nonsense. Clueless.
So they've bought the Pixel team of HTC, yet Samsung sell more refurbished exploding Note7's than they sell Pixel phones. In their heads they're a success, in reality, they clearly are passengers on Samsung's train.
It sounds like a legal way and face saving way for Google to prop up HTC. I can imagine the backlash is Google just gave HTC the billion. It wouls likely be unfortunate for Google if Samsung was the only major supplier of Android phones.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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.