Google is buying a team of engineers from HTC’s smartphone division… for 1.1 billion dollars. Google isn’t buying a direct stake in HTC. It instead will have licensing rights to HTC’s intellectual property. These engineers are people who have already worked with Google to develop its Pixel smartphones, and they will soon become Google employees. The billion-dollar deal doesn’t spell the end of HTC’s smartphone business, but analysts predict its days are numbered.

With 1.1 billion dollars in hand HTC is expected to concentrate on next generation technologies, including developing its VR business. There’s also a good chance HTC will form closer ties with Google in the development of AR and VR applications.

Delay after delay has plagued Apple’s iPhone 10… and if the latest analyst report is true, those delays are continuing. The iPhone 10 goes on sale October 27th, and according to a chip analyst from Raymond James, production on the flagship smartphone hasn’t even begun yet. Speculation is that the phones will actually start to be made in mid-October, with full scale production ramping up in December. All of this means that the new face scanning, OLED screened, thousand dollar, best ever iPhone… won’t be very easy to get.

There aren’t any estimates of how many units Apple plans to ship when the iPhone 10 first rolls out, and we’re only going to know for sure when pre-orders open up. I think it’s safe to say most people who order one will be waiting a long time.

When designing a car, the old way of doing things was to sculpt models in clay. Now with Microsoft’s Hololens, designers at Ford are using augmented reality to make changes to full size cars in real time. This not only speeds up the process of designing a new car, but it allows everyone working on a project to all see the same changes being made virtually. Unfortunately, the $3000 Hololens is only available to design professionals who are able to partner with Microsoft and help to improve the headset.

Consumer level AR enabled headsets are slowly trickling out, and Microsoft has announced a mixed reality event for October 3rd to reveal its next steps for the tech. Hopefully it’ll be a Hololens for all.