Episode 45: HTC, Google and the Future of Mobile
Acquired
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
4.8 • 2.9K Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2017
⏱️ 83 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Acquired is back and live on the scene! After months of speculation, Google announces today their acquisition (err, "Cooperation Agreement”) of a large portion of HTC’s hardware division. What does this mean for the future of mobile? Can Google transform itself into a vertically integrated device company and compete directly with Apple? Most importantly, when will we see more Beats Android handsets??? (We hope never)
Sponsors:
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta
Statsig: bit.ly/statsigacquired
Modern Treasury: https://bit.ly/acquiredmoderntreasury
Topics Covered Include:
- The origins of HTC as a Taiwanese OEM, dating back to the Compaq iPAQ and Palm Treo 650!
- HTC’s long history with Google, starting as the manufacturer of the first Android phone, the HTC Dream / T-Mobile G1
- HTC’s ownership of Beats, for a hot minute
- Google’s own winding history in hardware, with its Motorola acquisition in 2011 and divestiture in 2014
- Google & HTC’s joint work on the Pixel smartphones in 2016
- And much analysis and speculation on what this means for Google, Apple, Samsung, vertical vs horizontal business models and more!
The Carve Out:
- Ben: Odesza’s new album A Moment Apart
- David: Bruce Springsteen on Fresh Air
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Well, this is nuts. It's like leaking out as we speak. |
| 0:04.0 | Yeah, coming at you alive. Welcome back to episode 45 of Acquired, the podcast about technology acquisitions and IPOs. |
| 0:23.3 | I'm then Gilbert. |
| 0:24.8 | I'm David Rosenthal. |
| 0:26.3 | And we are your hosts. |
| 0:28.0 | Today we are live covering the leaks as they come out. |
| 0:32.1 | Well, Google is apparently about to acquire H.T.C. or at least a part of |
| 0:37.8 | H.T.C. and David and I are hitting refresh on our browsers while recording this on the evening of Wednesday, |
| 0:46.2 | September 20th, around 8 p.m. Pacific time. |
| 0:49.8 | And even since we decided a few hours ago to shift course and dive into this episode instead of one that we will do next week that is less time sensitive. |
| 0:59.0 | There's been new information. |
| 1:03.0 | Yeah, we're coming at you live here on acquired. |
| 1:08.0 | So we decided that the way we want to structurally do this is we'll sort of state our assumptions about what we know because Dave and I |
| 1:16.0 | were talking about it and we're pretty sure that we know the majority of the |
| 1:18.8 | information that will be announced tomorrow and so we'll sort of state what we know and then you know if we need |
| 1:25.3 | to pop in and revise at the beginning of the episode or something which you will have already |
| 1:29.8 | heard if you're listening to this, then we will. |
| 1:32.7 | So everything that you'll hear is based off of some assumptions that we'll introduce. |
| 1:38.6 | Yeah, there's like, there's some serious time travel going on in this episode because you guys will be listening to this in the future obviously. |
| 1:45.0 | We're here in the evening, Pacific time on September 20th. |
| 1:50.0 | It's already morning in Asia, |
| 1:52.0 | and so the official news is starting to come out over in Taiwan. |
... |
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