Topic: Design
★ Google and HTC Announce $1.1 Billion Acquihire and Patent Licensing Deal (Sep 21, 2017)
Google and HTC finally announced the deal that’s been rumored for a while and for which many details leaked yesterday. Google is in the end only acquiring 2000 employees and some non-exclusive intellectual property, for $1.1 billion, an amount over half of HTC’s market cap before the deal was announced. The 2000 are around half the research and design team at HTC (and a fifth of the total workforce), while the other half will remain and work on a streamlined portfolio of first-party HTC hardware including a new flagship already in the works. Google’s blog post about the deal is remarkably vague and unhelpful, and it’s equally remarkable that there’s no SEC filing or press release on Alphabet’s investor relations site about the deal given its magnitude. It’s almost as if Google doesn’t want to talk about the deal or its details, but HTC very much wants to, emphasizing both the financial boon – the money to be paid in cash once the deal closes in early 2018 – and its ongoing commitment to making smartphones and VR devices.
The deal has echoes of Microsoft’s bailout acquisition of Nokia a few years back – HTC is a far less important strategic partner to Google, but this very much feels like Google offering a financial lifeline to the very unprofitable and shrinking HTC in return for some assets it needs. Those assets are IP necessary to make Pixel phones without being sued by HTC or anyone else but also the research and design skills necessary to build those phones exactly to Google’s specifications and needs rather than having to work off HTC’s foundation and platform, originally built for other devices. That optimization and the integration with Android it should enable are going to be critical for Google to squeeze the most out of its hardware efforts, though it also needs to go deeper on the chips side, something it’s been reported to be doing separately.
One of the things I’ve been asked about by reporters over the last 24 hours or so is what effect this will have on other Android OEMs. The simple answer is that it clearly strengthens Google’s first party hardware capabilities, which for now aren’t much of a threat. But it’s not as if those OEMs can do anything about it – Android is the only viable open smartphone platform out there today, and if OEMs aren’t producing top-notch, differentiated hardware, Google’s efforts in the space are far from their only problem. One thing is notable: Android engineering head Dave Burke is apparently in Taipei – which is interesting because Google hardware has been said to run at arm’s length from Android team, like any other OEM, so there’s no real reason why Dave Burke would need to be involved in this transaction, and yet there he is in HTC’s home city as this deal is announced.
From HTC’s perspective, the cash infusion will give it breathing room to continue working on a strategy that can again provide sustainable profits in the long run, presumably with its Vive VR business at its core, given that even a shrunken smartphone team isn’t likely to be profitable at its current (or smaller, Pixel-less) scale. I do wonder why Google didn’t just buy the whole company – at under $2 billion market cap, Google could presumably have paid roughly double what it is and had the whole thing, taking what it needed, including manufacturing capability, VR hardware expertise, and other useful pieces, and shut the rest down. This deal is certainly simpler and less painful from an integration perspective, but I’m still not sure I see a viable future for HTC even with this investment and the attendant changes.
via HTC
★ Google Reportedly About to Announce Partial HTC Acquisition (Sep 20, 2017)
HTC has formally announced that its shares will halt trading for a material announcement tomorrow, and Bloomberg is reporting that it will be that Google is acquiring at least part of the company’s smartphone operations. Other sources – including Taiwanese site Apple Daily and as I understand it shortly also the Wall Street Journal – are saying that it’s the smartphone design operations specifically that Google will acquire, for a relatively small sum in the hundreds of millions of dollars. As I’ve said before, there’s a strong logic to this acquisition despite the history with Motorola. The biggest change since that earlier acquisition is that Google is now far more clearly serious about hardware, with a consolidated division about to announce a second generation of major products at an October 4th launch event. In addition, acquiring a very focused slice of HTC would be a very different proposition from buying what was at the time a much larger and more diverse Motorola business, which was subsequently run largely at arm’s length inside Google. I would expect Google to bring the HTC assets deeply into its own hardware division and to use the new capabilities to drive much more optimized and integrated hardware design relative to the ODM approach used for Pixel hardware, which likely relied heavily on existing designs and platforms from HTC.
All of this is, of course, further validation along with Microsoft’s Surface push of the approach Apple has long taken to tightly integrating hardware and software. It’s increasingly clear that the best results in hardware are achieved by those who can combine hardware and software in such a way, preferably with tight control of the whole process, and Google would get a lot closer to that goal through this acquisition. The big question still remains what happens to whatever’s left of HTC, which presumably will abandon making smartphones and focus on its Vive VR efforts, something that’s going to be a tough proposition in an increasingly competitive market. I’m still surprised that Google isn’t taking over the whole thing, because it could clearly benefit from the Vive assets as it seeks to deepen its own Daydream VR capabilities.
via Bloomberg
Bloomberg Article Suggests Apple’s Strategy Rests on Perfecting Rivals’ Ideas (Aug 22, 2017)
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Facebook Launches Redesigns of News Feed and Instagram Comments (Aug 15, 2017)
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iPhone Design and Feature Details Show Up in HomePod Firmware (Jul 31, 2017)
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This is the Samsung Galaxy S8, launching March 29 – VentureBeat (Jan 26, 2017)
Evan Blass, who used to publish leaks anonymously under the pseudonym Evleaks and has a great track record of accurate reporting, claims these are pictures of the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy S8. The main changes are a full screen front, with the fingerprint sensor moved to the back, while charging switches from micro USB to USB-C, and Samsung retains the headphone jack. The smaller bezel approach has been widely rumored for the next iPhone this fall, and I think what we’re seeing here to some extent is the same rush into smartwatches in the year or two before the Apple Watch emerged, driven by rumors of where Apple was going. In the smartwatch category, we saw a variety of failed attempts to create something compelling only for the Apple Watch to dominate the market when it launched, and you always have to wonder with this pre-emptive following whether competitors will really be able to crack the concept in a way that’s as compelling as whatever Apple releases. Xiaomi already has an essentially bezel-less phone, LG is reported to be moving in that direction, and now Samsung supposedly is too. It’ll be very interesting to see how this space looks at the end of the year once all these phones (including a new iPhone) are on the market.
via VentureBeat
This is not a drill: Snapchat is about to get a major redesign – Mashable (Jan 12, 2017)
It’s always seemed almost a point of pride with Snapchat that its user interface is unintuitive and hard to navigate, so it’s a bit surprising to see it engage in such a significant redesign of its app. But this may well make the app less intimidating to new users who’ve been put off by the previous arcane user interface, which may be an indication that Snap wants to broaden the appeal of its app beyond its current target market.
via This is not a drill: Snapchat is about to get a major redesign – Mashable