GOOGL Alphabet Inc

By Dana Mattioli in New York, Dan Strumpf in Hong Kong and Jack Nicas in San Francisco 

Alphabet Inc.'s Google is set to buy part of struggling Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp., according to people familiar with the situation, part of the search giant's latest effort to crack the handset market.

The acquisition, which could be announced as soon as Wednesday afternoon, is for HTC's mobile-phone original design operations, according to the people. Google chose HTC, a longtime Google supplier, as its contract manufacturer for the high-end Pixel phone that Google launched last year, partly as a challenge to Apple Inc.

HTC, based in Taiwan, suspended trading of its shares Wednesday pending an announcement. HTC's market capitalization is about $1.9 billion. The value or size of the division Google is set to buy is unclear.

HTC and Google declined to comment.

HTC once held a commanding position in the handset market. Its global market share peaked at 9% in 2011, when it shipped 44 million units of its own-branded phones, according to Counterpoint Research. By last year that share had plummeted to less than 1%, Counterpoint data show.

With the acquisition, Google may get deeper access to HTC's research and development, as well as sales and distribution channels, analysts said. That could help Google as it seeks to make a bigger splash in the increasingly competitive smartphone market as it prepares to launch an updated version of the Pixel this fall.

The deal shows "Google is very serious about building its own hardware," said Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research.

Write to Dana Mattioli at dana.mattioli@wsj.com, Dan Strumpf at daniel.strumpf@wsj.com and Jack Nicas at jack.nicas@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 20, 2017 15:29 ET (19:29 GMT)

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