Struggling Taiwanese smartphone brand, HTC is reportedly selling off its smartphone business to search giant Google. HTC recently revealed its financial report for August 2017, in which the company reported revenue decrease of 51.56%, a dip of 54.39% since August 2016. Well, the August revenue is the company’s worst month in the last 13 years.
HTC has made some stellar smartphones in recent times. However, they didn’t receive a good reception from the audience and are outsmarted by the competition. The HTC 10 was a solid device but was dethroned by Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. The U11 Ultra is a smartphone which HTC can only answer why it even exists. And the recently announced HTC U11 again was not well received by the consumers, even though HTC got the pricing right this time.A Chinese portal, Commercial Times, claims that HTC is in the final stage of negotiation with Google to sell off its smartphone business. It is also said that Google is considering two options- to become a strategic partner or to purchase the entire smartphone business.
HTC looking to sell off its business was reported earlier as well, but an official from HTC cleared the air by removing all the rumours. But after the August month’s revenue dip, it’s highly possible that the brand is looking to sell the business. Further, HTC Vive business may be sold separately.
It is not a surprising news to hear that Google is looking to buy the HTC smartphone business because last year’s Pixel phones were manufactured by HTC itself. And rumours suggest that one of the 2017 Pixel phones will be manufactured by HTC itself. However, it looks like Google itself isn’t satisfied with HTC, which is the reason why the company chose LG to manufacture bigger Pixel 2.
It will be interesting to see how Google handles the HTC brand because in the past the search giant acquired Motorola, only to sell it off to Lenovo after few years. Acquiring HTC’ smartphone business will give Google complete control on building a smartphone.
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