They may not have had produced a tablet since the failure of the Flyer back in 2011, but if reports are to be believed, HTC is apparently being eyed by Google to produce the next Nexus 9-inch tablet. The Taiwanese OEM has been focusing on creating smartphones and their flagship HTC One devices have been receiving rave reviews, despite sales being less than what is expected.
Both Google and HTC have refused to comment or confirm the rumours, but there have been reports that HTC engineers have been paying a visit to the Googleplex for the past few months. Unless they are just very friendly with each other, this means they are working on a project, which might just be the next Nexus tablet. The choice of HTC for manufacturing a tablet might seem a strange one since they are not known for producing great ones, but maybe the great reviews for the HTC One M8 might have something to do it.
Google also has a habit of working with different OEMs for each new device, so as to prevent just one manufacturer from having a monopoly in the Android community. This has been one of the reasons for the strained relations between Google and Samsung as of late, despite a cross-licensing patent deal struck between the two earlier this year. While Google hasn’t officially commented on their using different partners for the Nexus devices, they did say that there is always room for more partners in the “vibrant ecosystem” of Android.
Not much is known yet about the 9-inch Nexus tablet, but HTC would hope that the same thing that happened to Asus would happen to them. The latter saw their sales increase to double digits when they released the Nexus 7 back in 2012.
VIA: Wall Street Journal