HTC and Google Enter a $1.36 CAD Billion “Cooperation Agreement”

It’s not like we didn’t see it coming. HTC this week announced a “Cooperation Agreement” with Google which will see the Alphabet-owned company acquire the Taiwanese’s phone maker intellectual property and absorb a select number of employees.

The agreement stipulates HTC will receive $1.1 / 1.36 CAD billion in cash from Google, which will have a non-exclusive license for HTC’s intellectual property. But this doesn’t mean the search giant is buying HTC’s mobile division. Instead Google is paying this amount of money for the phone maker’s “Powered by HTC” research and development team, which helped create the two Pixel phones. The HTC employees who will soon go to work for Google were part of the joint Pixel efforts.

However, the deal does not include HTC’s manufacturing plants or access to said plants. Instead, Google will continue to continue to rely on HTC’s facilities.

As for HTC, the company will carry on with its smartphone and virtual reality ambitions and hopefully this injection of cash will finally put it on the right track. Actually, the company noted it is already working on its next-generation flagship phone, the successor of the well-received HTC U11.

In a few days, Google will also take the stage to unveiled the Pixel 2 smartphone – which will be manufactured by HTC. A second Pixel 2 XL model will be made by LG this year.

[HTC]