Earlier today, Google and HTC confirmed that some of HTC’s employees will be moving to Google, and in addition to that, Google also gained non-exclusive rights to HTC’s intellectual property. This deal, that the two companies announced, is worth a whopping $1.1 billion. Google picked up HTC’s employees who have been working or are still working on the ‘Pixel’ project, just to be clear. Now, we’ve already talked about all this in our initial announcement, if you’d like to know more, and are here to focus on a specific part of the announcement that basically needs separate coverage due to its importance. HTC basically confirmed that the rumored HTC-branded flagship handset will continue being developed by the company, and released in time.
Now, as part of the announcement, HTC said that it will ‘continue to have best-in-class engineering talent’, while the company also added that such talent is currently working on the company’s next flagship smartphone. In its announcement, HTC also said that the HTC U11 launch was quite successful, so we’re presuming that HTC was referring to its 2018 flagship handset, not the phone that is rumored to arrive before the end of the year. A rather interesting rumor surfaced two days ago, saying that HTC plans to introduce three new smartphones by the end of this year, one of which will be the company’s new flagship. A phone codenamed ‘Ocean Master’ is rumored to sport a 6-inch display, and launch in 4GB and 6GB of RAM. 12 and 8-megapixel snappers are also rumored to be included on the back of this phone, and we’re presuming that it will be fueled by the Snapdragon 835 64-bit octa-core SoC, if it ever becomes a reality, that is.
HTC probably was not referring to the HTC Ocean Master, though, but the HTC U12, or whatever the company plans to call its 2018 flagship which is due to arrive in the first half of 2018. We still do not have any info whatsoever about that handset, but it will probably be fueled by Qualcomm’s next-gen flagship processor, and pack in at least 6GB of RAM. This deal that HTC reached with Google will make things a lot easier for the company, as it will give them a financial boost they’ve been needing. HTC will still release smartphones, it seems, but the company’s also quite focused on VR.