The new Pixel and Pixel XL phones could represent a huge win for Google in the smartphone market. But Google isn’t the only company staking its ambitions on the new handsets.
During a launch event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Google executives spent nearly 90 minutes running through their myriad of new offerings, from the Pixel phones to Google Home to Google Assistant, the new, souped-up AI assistant. But as they spoke onstage, one word was conspicuously absent from their vocabulary: HTC.
While Google has focused its recent branding around the phrase “Made by Google,” HTC is its partner in making and assembling the phones. Based in Taiwan, HTC lacks a strong brand presence in the U.S., and has struggled in recent years to remain competitive in the crowded Android smartphone field.
Google, meanwhile, seems comfortable relegating HTC to the role of silent partner.”There is no HTC branding because this is a Google phone that brings together premium hardware by multiple partners to serve a best in class software experience for users,” said Google spokesperson told CNET. Meanwhile, HTC appeared pleased with the deal, despite the lack of promotion around its role in creating the Pixel phones. “We’re proud that when Google needed an industry-leading partner for the Pixel, HTC was the clear answer,” HTC spokesman Jeff Gordon also told CNET.
While it’s difficult to gauge consumer reception until sales start later this month, Google is likely to sell upwards of 3 to 4 million Pixel phones in 2016, according to research by the analytics firm Digitimes. Meanwhile, HTC will likely sell 6.5 to 7 million units of its own, non-Google-related phones. That means that the Pixel could represent a full 46% of the phones HTC will produce for the second half of the year.
This is huge for HTC, which has struggled to revive its reputation as a maker for cutting-edge Android phones. Its stock has dropped from $1,300 a share during its heyday in 2011 down to $89.10 today. More recently, its revenues plummeted from $74.5 billion for the first half of 2015 to $33.7 billion for the first half of 2016. This summer, it even spun off its HTC Vive business unit, almost certainly so that it could make sure the highly-successful Vive wouldn’t be tied to the rise and fall of its smartphones.
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Given that the Pixel phones are stamped with the Google brand, it doesn’t look like they are going to rocket the HTC name into American popularity. But, at the very least, they could help HTC stay in the game.
