• The new Nexus 6P phone is displayed during a Google media event on Sept. 29, 2015 in San Francisco, California.

The new Nexus 6P phone is displayed during a Google media event on Sept. 29, 2015 in San Francisco, California. (Photo : Getty Images/ Justin Sullivan )

Rumors indicate that Chinese device maker Huawei could end up assembling the Google Nexus 2016 flagship phone and the chief reason is, Taiwan's HTC has decided to back out of the coveted project. A new report claims that in skipping the next Nexus, HTC is actually protecting its flagship HTC 10. 

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A news article published by the Daily Sun claimed that sales trajectory of the HTC 10 is heading north and to keep that trend, the struggling device maker is likely to pass up on the Nexus 2016 project. Recent reports said that Google has inked a deal with HTC for the latter to produce two Pure Android handsets this year - a mid-range variant and a premium edition that will largely replicate the Nexus 2015 release last year.

However, the project would not push through after all with HTC belatedly realizing that a Nexus smartphone that mirror the design, build, specs and features of its current flagship "would cannibalize the sales of the HTC 10." The report added that given a choice between the HTC 10 and a Nexus counterpart that runs on stock Android, buyers might skip the original in favor of the Google-sanctioned device.

Naturally, HTC dreads such a scenario and would want to prevent it from happening so the best decision is to allow others to pick up on the Nexus project from Google.

And this aligns with the latest report that Huawei indeed is already working on a new device that pretty much is the Nexus 6P with upgraded specs and features. A Geekbench leak hints that a 6P prototype is already being tested running on Google's new mobile operating system - Android N.

The 6P follow up was listed too with Snapdragon 820 as the main engine. And the chip will count on 4GB of RAM as more than sufficient memory chip support.

Google and Huawei, HTC including, have yet to comment on the matter but speculations are rife that the sequel to last year's Pure Android device will touchdown at around the same time that Android N is ready to rock and roll with uncompressed Google Photo storage as among the exclusive features for Nexus device. The final cut of the next Android version is expected no later than August this year, suggesting that the Nexus 2016 release date will happen at around the same time.