We’re focused on building our core capabilities,’ Rick Osterloh, senior vice president of hardware, said in a blog post. ‘It’s still early days for Google’s hardware business.
Yet some Android partners are moving ahead with competing software efforts - Huawei linked up with Amazon’s assistant, and Samsung Electronics Co. The Pixel was designed, in part, to prompt phone makers push out these updates faster. The tech giant has struggled to get handset makers and carriers to ship Android devices with the latest secure software. The company - like many of Silicon Valley’s frontrunners - has a reputation for comfy perks and compensation.Ī more Apple-like approach would also let Google steer the Android operating system in its preferred direction. Google didn’t say exactly how it would retain employees after the acquisition, only that it is working on the details. Greater control of hardware production would also give Google more influence over the distribution of new services such as its voice-based digital assistant.
The production resources of HTC - which assembled the first Pixel device and was key to the Nexus line - may support its existing phone operation.
and Xiaomi Corp., are now less reliant on Google for services. And some of the biggest emergent manufacturers, such as China’s Huawei Technologies Co. Google has also launched its own phones since Motorola, so Android phone makers have gotten used to their partner as a rival. Having different Android partners making their own phones with disparate components makes this task more difficult for Google - especially when Apple can pick one set of AR hardware to marry to its software. The HTC transaction however costs a lot less and comes at a very different time - when Google and its biggest rivals are more focused than ever on consumer devices built around new artificial-intelligence and augmented-reality services.Īugmented reality demands powerful, expensive cameras and sensors working in sync with software to process and superimpose 3-D images on real world scenes. Owning Motorola had eroded the search giant’s profit margins and upset other phone makers that relied on Android, Google software that it supplies to handset manufacturers to promote its services. for less than $3 billion, while keeping Motorola’s valuable patent portfolio. In less than three years, Google sold it to Lenovo Group Ltd.
In 2012, Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility, then a leading Android handset manufacturer. ‘Google essentially gets more control over its hardware design, it can help them accelerate innovation with its own products and use that as the benchmark for the Android ecosystem to follow.’Īlphabet investors may be concerned about history repeating itself. ‘The end game here is more flexibility on hardware innovation, which can spur incremental revenue through services enabled by those innovations,’ said Jitendra Waral, a senior analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence.
The search giant is preparing to unveil a second generation of devices in October, building on a portfolio that runs the gamut from Google Home speakers to Daydream virtual reality headsets. Those gadgets are becoming the pillars of a strategic push to distribute critical software products like its voice-enabled assistant and better compete with Apple Inc. Google now gains tighter control over the design and production of the Pixel and other devices, potentially helping sales. The deal also comes with a non-exclusive licensing agreement for HTC intellectual property. Google has agreed to buy part of HTC Corp.’s engineering and design teams for $1.1 billion, taking on a cadre of veterans that worked on the Pixel phone in hopes the acquisition could bolster its nascent hardware business.Īlphabet Inc.’s Google is taking on some 2,000 employees with experience working on its signature Pixel devices, intended to showcase the best features of the Android software that now power the vast majority of the world’s smartphones. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menuīy Mark Bergen, Jonathan Browning, Lulu Yilun Chen and Samson Ellis, Bloomberg