Google has acquired numerous HTC’s XR engineers, one thing the corporate says will “speed up the event of the Android XR platform throughout the headsets and glasses ecosystem.”
Google’s announcement of Android XR final month represents a crucial shift within the aggressive panorama, as Samsung will ostensibly be the primary to launch a headset operating Android XR. Pleasure for acquainted faces providing up competitors within the client XR house was tempered considerably by the same old questions surrounding Google’s capacity to decide to the venture long-term.
Whereas Google has addressed a few of these underlying considerations in a Highway to VR unique, which you’ll learn extra about right here, that doesn’t scale back the laundry listing of services killed by the corporate through the years, one among which incorporates Google Daydream, the corporate’s first actual try at getting into the XR house correct again in 2016.
Now, Google introduced it’s signed an settlement with HTC to amass numerous HTC’s XR engineers. The main points of the settlement are nonetheless skinny, though it’s potential Google is tapping HTC for its {hardware} expertise in a bid to safe a extra stable basis within the fashionable XR section.
“We’ve been investing in XR for greater than a decade, and simply final month launched the Android XR platform with our strategic business companions,” Google says within the announcement. “As we speak we signed an settlement to welcome among the HTC VIVE engineering staff to Google, which is topic to customary closing circumstances. They’re an extremely robust technical staff with a confirmed monitor file within the VR house, and we’re wanting ahead to working with them to speed up the event of the Android XR platform throughout the headsets and glasses ecosystem.”
Surprisingly sufficient, this isn’t the primary time Google paid high greenback for HTC engineers. In 2017, the corporate shelled out a princely sum to intestine HTC of its smartphone engineering expertise, amounting to $1.1 billion. One 12 months later, HTC merged its smartphone and VR divisions, which signaled HTC was placing elevated emphasis on its XR ambitions.
Because the particulars of the deal aren’t public, the place that leaves HTC for now continues to be a thriller. The Taoyuan, Taiwan-based firm is principally concerned in producing XR headsets for enterprise and prosumers, comparable to its newest headset Vive Focus Imaginative and prescient, a $1,000 standalone blended actuality headset that packs in a mishmash of specs from Vive Focus 3 (2021) and Vive Elite XR (2023).
That stated, HTC has dabbled with non-XR units within the current previous, though little or no to hold its hat on. In 2018, the corporate launched HTC Exodus 1, the crypto-phone that appeared encouraging sufficient for the corporate to launch its follow-up one 12 months later. In 2019, it launched an at-home 5G hub, which capitalized on the primary wave of buzz surrounding 5G. None of these units are at the moment being offered by HTC, so we’ll simply have to attend and see.
