Google and HTC declined to comment on whether they are collaborating on a Nexus tablet.
The failure of the Flyer tablet in 2011 was reason enough to make HTC say something like not walking into the territory of tablets ever again. However they also added that they would need a compelling reason to try again if they ever have to. But it looks like they have got the reason once again. For the upcoming 9-inch Nexus tablet, much to everyone’s surprise, Google selected HTC as its partner. We know there must have been some reason for not choosing more experienced tablet makers such as Samsung but still this came out as a bit of a shock. The work on the project has already begun and according to sources, the HTC engineers have been flying to the Googleplex in Mountain View in recent months to work on the project.
There has been no comment on the situation from neither HTC nor Google and there is no way of knowing why Google made this unusual choice of selecting HTC which lacks a strong tablet track-record and focuses almost exclusively on smartphones. This might be justified on Google’s part if we think that Google has always wanted to follow a philosophy of having a broad base of partners. We are aware of Google’s trend to change partners for every device and this is actually a very clever approach which helps to cushion against any one manufacturer gaining a monopoly.
source: wsj