Despite The Billion-Dollar Deal With Google, There Will Be Another HTC Flagship Device
Google and HTC announced a Cooperative Agreement worth US$1.1 billion wherein HTC’s smartphone engineers will work for Google once the transaction is completed. While more details about the deal will be disclosed in the days to come, the press release promptly answered one question everybody had on their minds – Will there be more HTC Android phones? The answer is, yes there will be.
This agreement also supports HTC’s continued branded smartphone strategy, enabling a more streamlined product portfolio, greater operational efficiency and financial flexibility. HTC will continue to have best-in-class engineering talent, which is currently working on the next flagship phone, following the successful launch of the HTC U11 earlier this year.
What the statement means is that HTC will now focus on its most profitable product, which is the flagship smartphones. The HTC U11, though, not the most successful flagship of 2017, still received great reviews and HTC will benefit a lot if it manages to improve on the U11 and come up with a better flagship in 2018. Greater financial operational efficiency and financial flexibility refer to the deal. HTC has been incurring losses for a long time now and with most of its smartphone department personnel now moving to Google’s payroll and the US$1.1 billion from the deal, the company will definitely have more financial resources now to work with.
Considering HTC’s flailing sales numbers and decreasing popularity in the smartphone market, a full-fledged takeover of its smartphone division by Google might be on the periphery. And giving up on the smartphone market and concentrating all its energies on making the Vive VR platform a global success might be the best way forward for the Taiwan-based tech company, HTC. With Google now taking control over the hardware for its upcoming smartphones and companies like Samsung and Apple miles ahead in the smartphone game, the 2018 flagship device by HTC might as well be their last one.
