According to the WSJ's sources, one of the main reasons for choosing HTC was to eliminate a monopoly arising from going with the same vendor over and over again. The last two generations of the Nexus 7 tablets were manufactured by Asus, so it makes sense that Google is deciding to choose a different vendor for its next Nexus tablet. Talks with HTC over the next Nexus tablet were said to be going on for more than a year now.