HTC announces halt in trading ahead of major announcement, may be related to deal with Google

HTC has announced that there will be a halt in the trading of its shares tomorrow, because of a major announcement. The announcement comes about two weeks after reports that Google was in the final stages of a deal to **acquire HTC's smartphone division** . HTC is apparently not in a good financial condition, and with revenues falling by over 50 percent compared to last month, and August last year.

JUST IN:
HTC just announced it's shares will halt trading tomorrow (Thur) pending a major announcement.

— Tim Culpan (@tculpan) September 20, 2017

Prolific leaker Evan Blass has indicated that he received an internal memo inviting HTC employees to a town hall meeting. A part of the agenda was the acquisition by Google. According to the source, Google will acquire some of HTC’s assets, but HTC will retain its brand name, and focus on the Vive sub brand. According to the previous reports as well, the Vive brand was not part of the negotiations with Google.

[1] Someone sent me a copy of an internal invitation to an HTC employee Town Hall meeting tmrw (9/21). One alleged topic: Google acquisition

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) September 20, 2017

Google bought Motorola Mobility  for $12.3 billion in 2011 and then  **sold it to Lenovo**  for $12.4 billion in 2014. The value of the current deal is unknown. The two approaches being considered by Google involved either becoming a strategic partner of HTC, or purchasing its smartphone unit. [caption id=“attachment_4063395” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The Google Pixel[/caption] HTC is the manufacturing partner for the Google branded Pixel lineup of smartphones. The latest Google Pixel 2 is expected to have the **edge sense feature in the HTC U11** , which will allow users to squeeze the frame of the phone to trigger the digital assistant.