Google announced on Thursday an agreement with the manufacturer of smartphones HTC for the recruitment of engineers of the Taiwanese company.
Is Google dreams of competing with Apple and Samsung on the phone? The California-based company announced Thursday on its blog the conclusion of an agreement with the Taiwanese manufacturer HTC, which provides that HTC engineers join Google. The "New York Times" indicates that approximately 2000 HTC employees are affected by this decision, which represents a spending of $ 1.1 billion for Google. Google and HTC have already worked closely on smartphones specifically designed for the Android mobile operating system. The deal announced on Thursday makes it clear that Google does not want to just produce software solutions. After the mobiles, Google ventures on connected products, such as the Google Home speaker, or the Chromecast that allows you to stream videos to your TV.
"In many respects, this agreement reflects the teamwork between HTC and Google over the past decade," said Rick Osterloh, vice president of Google in charge of hardware.
The Motorola acquisition, an aborted attempt
The "New York Times" notes that the previous attempt at massive investment in the telephone sector had failed. In 2011, Google had bought Motorola for 12.5 billion euros, before reselling it less than three years later to the Chinese manufacturer Lenovo for only 2.9 billion. Nevertheless, notes the "Times", the US company has retained a good deal of Motorola's patents, an important point to combat possible Apple attacks in the field of intellectual property.
Last year, Google had unveiled a smartphone designed to its specifications and manufactured by HTC, the Pixel. The experience did not immediately threaten the supremacy of the Apple iPhone: the apple phone has sold more than 41 million copies between April 1 and July 1, 2017 Google did not reveal sales figures for the Pixel, but observers, based on the scores of a Pixel app in the Google Store, estimated sales of between 1 and 2 million copies since its launch in the fall of 2016.