Tech giants close to acquiring smartphone maker HTC

abiola

September 8, 2017 2:32 PM

Google is having a renewed interest in hardware, having now seeing it as a growth area for the company outside of its core ad business.

Google is reportedly making a move to acquire Taiwan smartphone maker HTC.

According to a report in a Taiwanese publication, the two companies are in the final stages of acquisition talks, with the report not saying how much Google may buy HTC for.

This development would come as a surprise for followers of the company, having seen that they had earlier in 2011 bought smartphone company Motorola for $12.9billion, which it eventually sold off in 2014 to Lenovo for $2.9billion.

This move is also being seen as a strategy to challenge the iPhone in the hardware market as Google has begun making its own devices called Pixel phones.

According to the Commercial Times article noted by USB on Thursday, September 7, 2017, the deal would involve only HTC's smartphone research-and-development team. UBS said it expected that a deal would be immaterial to the financials of Google's parent company, Alphabet.Of the potential benefits of the deal, UBS said, "Deeper integration of hardware/software would offset some of the Android fragmentation issues that do not plague Apple iOS."

Shares of Alphabet were unchanged in after-hours trading on Thursday.

HTC is said to be selling because it has been struggling with its smartphone sales and virtual-reality-headset business.

Google is expected to release an update to the Pixel phone and a new touchscreen Chromebook in October.

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