Google is biting off a big piece of device manufacturer HTC for $1.1 billion to expand its efforts to build phones, speakers, and other gadgets equipped with its arsenal of digital services.
It's buying the HTC engineering team that built the Pixel smartphone for Google in a cash deal, the companies said in a joint statement Thursday. Google is also getting a non-exclusive license for Taiwan-based HTC's intellectual property to help support Pixel phones.
The deal underscores how serious Google is becoming about designing its own family of devices to compete against Apple and Amazon in a high-stakes battle to become the technological hub of people's lives.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday October 05 2017, @10:02AM
Well my first thought on reading about the new Pixel phones, is the eSim for those on Fi.
In principle, that free's up the SIM slot for external storage,no?