SAN FRANCISCO — Google is biting off a big piece of device manufacturer HTC for $1.1 billion to expand its efforts to build phones, speakers and other gadgets equipped with its arsenal of digital services.
It's buying the HTC engineering team that built the Pixel smartphone for Google in a cash deal, the companies said in a joint statement Thursday. Google is also getting a non-exclusive license for Taiwan-based HTC's intellectual property to help support Pixel phones.
The deal underscores how serious Google is becoming about designing its own family of devices to compete against Apple and Amazon in a high-stakes battle to become the technological hub of people's lives.
"We think this is a very important step for Google in our hardware efforts," Rick Osterloh, Google's senior vice president of hardware, said at a news conference in Taipei. "We've been focusing on building our core capabilities. But with this agreement, we're taking a very large leap forward."
The deal, which needs regulatory approval, is expected to close by early 2018.
Read Friday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.