Another Report Says HTC is Behind the Next Nexus

While we haven’t seen any leaks of hardware, there seems to be little doubt that HTC is the gadget maker behind Google’s next Nexus tablet, codenamed Flounder, and set to be called either the Nexus 8 or Nexus 9, depending on the phase of the moon. A new report from the Wall Street Journal seems to indicate without a shadow of a doubt that the two companies have partnered up for the latest Nexus tablet – and if it’s anything like the last few HTC One handsets, it should be a real show stopper.

The report doesn’t really say much we haven’t already heard, except to apparently reconfirm that Google and HTC are working together on the new Nexus. Apparently “HTC engineers have beenf lying to the Googleplex in Mountain View in recent months to work on the project.” Meanwhile, neither company has commented on the collaboration.

Google did issue this statement in response to questions about why it teams up with different hardware partners for each Nexus project:

“Android is a vibrant ecosystem, and many of the industry players are doing very well. There’s room for many partners to do well and to innovate with Android.”

The previous Nexus tablet, the first and second generations of the Nexus 7 from 2012 and 2013, was made by Asus. The Nexus 5 smartphone, however, was made by LG. Recent rumors have pointed to a Nexus 6 device coming from Motorola, which is codenamed Shamu, and will hopefully knock our socks off.

Just when will Google unveil any of these devices? It’s not entirely clear. Android developer Paul O’Brien tweeted a few days ago that we’ll hear about the launch of the new Nexus tablet on October 16, at which point we’ll also get more hard information about the release of the newest version of Android, Android L:

Same source: Announcement rather than launch of the HTC Nexus 9 on 16th October. 8.9″ (of course!)

— Paul O’Brien (@PaulOBrien) September 18, 2014

Is it accurate? Who knows? We’ll find out soon enough, though.

[Source: Wall Street Journal]