"This agreement is a brilliant next step in our longstanding partnership, enabling Google to supercharge their hardware business while ensuring continued innovation within our HTC smartphone and VIVE virtual reality businesses. Google gains half of HTC’s research and development team – about 2,000 people – and a non-exclusive license for HTC’s intellectual property, allowing it to take advantage of some of HTC’s advances in smartphone technology. Even after this agreement, HTC will continue to come up with its flagship smartphones and will also continue to build the virtual reality ecosystem to grow its VIVE business, while investing in other next- generation technologies, including the Internet of Things, augmented reality and artificial intelligence. McQueen said: “What is in Google’s favour this time is that it is buying just a part of HTC, and it is a part that can help it deliver smartphones with a premium, elegant industrial design while also providing much tighter integration between hardware, the Android OS and Google’s services.”

Despite being the maker of Android, there’s no doubt Google faces a massive uphill battle in the smartphone market. HTC gets a cash injection, which will help it survive in some very competitive markets, and Google gets to continue its “big bet on hardware” according to Rick Osterloh, the company’s senior vice president for hardware.
Google strikes a $1.1bn (£822m) deal with Taiwan's HTC to expand its smartphone business.