Google’s $1.1 billion deal to acquire most of HTC’s smartphone design division has officially closed. Hardware VP Rick Osterloh announced the news in a blog post, hailing the arrival of an “incredibly talented team to work on even better and more innovative products in the years to come.”

The deal involves more than 2,000 HTC engineers moving over to Google. They will all remain in Taiwan; Osterloh notes that Taipei is becoming Google’s biggest engineering hub in the Asia-Pacific region. HTC’s contract manufacturing operations and VR division are not affected, but a substantial majority of the smartphone R&D team is joining Google, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Continue reading…