Acquiring Talent From HTC Cost Google $1.1 Billion, Substantial Boost To Smartphone Ambitions

In a bid to become a more serious force in the smartphone market, Google just acquired more than 2,000 mobile engineers from HTC. This arrangement cost the search engine company $1.1 billion, but it could mean a huge boost to its smartphone R&D division. HTC is known for high-quality mobile devices, after all, which were also available at cheap prices.

While many of the products offered by HTC were reviewed favorably, they simply never caught on as well as brands like Huawei or OnePlus have. With a major tech player like Google, however, the HTC engineers that will now be under the search engine firm could create smartphones that could rival Apple or Samsung. The conclusion of the acquisition was formally announced via a blog post written by Hardware SVP Rick Osterloh.

“As our hardware business enters its third year, we remain committed to building and investing for the long run. Today, we start digging in with our new teammates, guided by the mission to create radically helpful experiences for people around the world, by combining the best of Google’s AI, software and hardware,” the post reads.

According to The Verge, sources say that the engineers will remain in Taiwan, for the time being. This would make the city of Taipei one of Google’s largest engineering spots in Asia.

The most noteworthy interpretation of this development, however, is the fact that it signals how serious Google is becoming in creating hardware. So far, its attempts have seemed disparate and fractured, producing only decent results.

Now that it literally has thousands of experienced and talented individuals from a company that made excellent mobile devices, perhaps the search engine entity can finally step on the same stage as the makers of the iPhone and Galaxy products. Not that the Pixel lineup is anything to sneeze at.