Ryan WhitwamRumors swirled last year that Google would acquire troubled smartphone maker HTC as the release of the Pixel 2 approached. Google agreed to acquire most of HTC's design team for $1.1 billion. Sources close to the deal claim HTC is giving up a substantial majority of its R&D team in the deal. This division was responsible not only for working on HTC's branded phones, but also contract jobs like the Google Pixel phones. Selling off its design team to Google doesn't help it turn that trend around.

Source: Forbes January 30, 2018 20:37 UTC