Winners and losers from the Google-HTC deal
Loser: Android’s partners
If you’re a company making Android devices, you feel betrayed. Google is getting into hardware, which almost conflicts with everything the ecosystem stands for. It’ll be an Apple-like luxury for Google to tailor hardware for software and software for hardware. Everyone else working with Android has to play by Google’s rules of what can and can’t be done. Android is and always will be customizable, but partners can’t beat the appeal of a Google-made phone.
Top-tier brands have nothing to worry about. Samsung proved its resilience by surviving a frightening scandal in which phones had exploding batteries, and LG will continue building high expectations but falling short every time. Motorola, meanwhile, will do whatever the carriers want. And Huawei can continue focusing on every region except North America. It’s the second-tier brands, like OnePlus and Sony, who have to be terrified of what’s coming.
The attack on its partners may not be immediate, though, and that’s a good thing. It’ll take more than a year for Google to develop a customer processor similar to Apple’s A-series of chips. We’ll likely see a phone in 2018 similar to the 2016 and 2017 phones. As it brings in outside components, Google will develop its own technologies. We’re about two years away from seeing a Google-made phone with custom components.
Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2017/09/21/winners-losers-google-htc-deal-analysis/