Google has recently acquired a group of HTC’s XR engineers for $250 million, with the goal of accelerating the development of the Android XR platform across various headsets and glasses in the ecosystem.
The introduction of Android XR by Google last month marked a significant shift in the competitive landscape, as Samsung is set to be the first to launch a headset running on Android XR. While there is excitement surrounding the familiar faces entering the consumer XR space, questions linger about Google’s long-term commitment to the project.
Despite addressing some of these concerns in an exclusive interview with Road to VR, Google’s history of discontinuing products and services, such as Google Daydream in 2016, raises doubts about the company’s sustainability in the XR market.
Google has now announced a deal with HTC to acquire some of its XR engineers for $250 million. The specifics of the agreement remain unclear, but it is likely that Google is leveraging HTC’s hardware expertise to establish a stronger presence in the modern XR sector.
“We’ve been investing in XR for over a decade and recently introduced the Android XR platform in collaboration with our industry partners,” Google stated in the announcement. “Today, we have reached an agreement to onboard some of HTC VIVE’s engineering team to Google, pending customary closing conditions. They are a highly skilled technical team with a successful track record in the VR industry, and we are excited to collaborate with them to advance the development of the Android XR platform across various headsets and glasses.”
Interestingly, this is not the first time Google has paid a premium for HTC engineers. In 2017, the company paid a substantial amount to acquire HTC’s smartphone engineering talent, totaling $1.1 billion. A year later, HTC merged its smartphone and VR divisions, signaling a renewed focus on its XR aspirations.
As the details of the deal remain undisclosed, HTC’s future trajectory remains uncertain. The Taiwan-based company primarily focuses on producing XR headsets for enterprise and prosumers, such as the latest Vive Focus Vision, a standalone mixed reality headset priced at $1,000, incorporating features from Vive Focus 3 (2021) and Vive Elite XR (2023).
Although HTC has experimented with non-XR devices in the past, including the HTC Exodus 1 crypto-phone in 2018 and an at-home 5G hub in 2019, the company has not sustained sales of these products. The future direction of HTC in the consumer tech market remains to be seen.
