In 2017, Google purchased of a portion of HTC’s smartphone business for $1.1 billion
Google issued a brief announcement about its intent to acquire a portion of Taiwan-based HTC’s extended reality (XR) unit for $250 million. The latest deal is in addition to Google’s 2017 purchase of a portion of the company’s smartphone business for $1.1 billion, which resulted in roughly 4,000 HTC staff joining Google.
“We’ve been investing in XR for more than a decade, and just last month introduced the Android XR platform with our strategic industry partners,” stated Google. “Today we signed an agreement to welcome some of the HTC VIVE engineering team to Google, which is subject to customary closing conditions.” The tech giant added that the acquisition will help “accelerate the development of the Android XR platform across the headsets and glasses ecosystem.”
The Android XR platform was created in collaboration with Samsung, and according to the tech giant, it combines “the years of investment in AI, AR and VR” to bring “helpful experiences” to wearables like headsets and glasses. “Android XR is designed to be an open, unified platform for XR headsets and glasses,” it said. “For users, this means more choice of devices and access to apps they already know and love. For developers, it’s a unified platform with opportunities to build experiences for a wide range of devices using familiar Android tools and frameworks.”
Google, along with Samsung, was also named as an early OEM partner for Qualcomm when it announced the XR2+ Gen 2 silicon platforms ahead of CES 2024.
Reuters spoke to HTC’s VP and general counsel Lu Chia-te, who shared that the company granted IP rights to Google as a non-exclusive license, and that it retained the ability to use it and develop it without restriction.
Not much else has been disclosed about the deal, but it is expected to close before the end of Q1.
