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Wow, not any of the tech blogs saw the smoke before the fire? Could be a hardware + patents play...
"Quick and easy fix for all Android patent problems. Google should buy Motorola" 02 Aug 11, unwiredview.com: http://www.unwiredview.com/2011/08/02/quick-and-easy-fix-to-...
Correctly interpreting - if not actual tarot reading.
MOTOROLA Launch Date: 1928 GOOGLE Launch Date: 7/9/1998
Motorola != Motorola Mobility. Motorola Mobility is a recent spin-off from Motorola and encompasses the original company's handset business as well as its related patent portfolio. What does Motorola do? Well ... cellular infrastructure is their core business, and they also have services/solutions for things like emergency response services (e.g. 911 in the US), law enforcement, and I think they still make walkie tal…
Motorola Mobility (MMI) and Motorola Solutions (MSI). The cellular infrastructure, part of MSI, was sold to Nokia/Siemes Networks.
Motorola Solutions in mainly the Enterprise Mobility Business (Mobile Rugged Devices), WiFi systems, Tetra networks and a lot of other Government stuffs.
Only part of Motorola, and not generally the part considered the "original". :) Motorola mobility was spun off of the main company in January - I think at the time there was commentary on the stock markets that it was done with the aim to get someone to buy it. So Motorola will exist still - as Motorola Solutions (it is the bigger & more profitable part of the company anyway) and Google get a phone manufacture divisi…
They did it for the patents. Larry Page: "Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies." Seems like the best jobs at Google will soon be the lawyers, not the engineers.
Only part of Motorola, and not generally the part considered the "original". :) Motorola mobility was spun off of the main company in January - I think at the time there was commentary on the stock markets that it was done with the aim to get someone to buy it. So Motorola will exist still - as Motorola Solutions (it is the bigger & more profitable part of the company anyway) and Google get a phone manufacture divisi…
They did it for the patents. Larry Page: "Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies." Seems like the best jobs at Google will soon be the lawyers, not the engineers.
They get patents and a manufacturing arm (which then gives them control of the entire product cycle for Android).
The latter is a logical move; a lot of Apple's success comes from controlling all aspects of the iPhone. I know Android is open software, but internally for Google it makes sense to drive product development from the hardware side too.
Interestingly, this means the only manufacturer-neutral smartphone OS is now Windows Phone 7. iOS is on Apple, Android is on Motorola/Google, Blackberry on RIM, and webOS on HP/Palm. I wonder if this means we'll see an increase in WP7-based phones from HTC, Samsung, and LG...
Isn't it questionable whether WP7 will be manufacturer-neutral? The level of cooperation between Nokia and Microsoft remains to be seen, but a possible outcome is that Nokia ends up looking like a subsidiary of Microsoft.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They did it for the patents. Larry Page: "Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies." Seems like the best jobs at Google will soon be the lawyers, not the engineers.
Many patent lawyers are engineers.
It's fascinating to me to see this shift, which Google seems to be leading, from tech companies fighting over new product development - and spending gobs of cash on it - to something entirely different: fighting over patents (and again, spending gobs of cash on it). Where a company spends its cash is a good measure of where its priorities are, and I'm not sure what that says about Google.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, this might be good news for the other "licensable" smartphone/tablet operating systems, which include WP7, webOS and MeeGo. Samsung already has Bada, which may have ambitions to become a bit more of a proper smartphone operating system. But there is a bunch of manufacturers that may have to switch from Android because of this deal.
Isn't Samsung talking to HP about WebOS for a while now? And - are there reasons to believe that Bada is not dead/completely irrelevant by now?
Really? I honestly do hope that something will come out of this that will relaunch WebOS.
Does this include any of the H264 patents that Motorola hold? If so this makes this story even more interesting, the cases for WebM/VP8 would change substantially.
"Parties with patents or patent applications determined by MPEG LA’s patent experts to be essential to the H.264/AVC standard (“standard”) so far include Columbia University, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute of Korea (ETRI), France Télécom, Fujitsu, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, Polycom, Robert Bosch GmbH, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Thomson, Toshiba, and Victor Company of Japan (JVC)."
On the other - I don't see Motorola here: http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx
So I'm a bit confused about whether Google just managed to buy into AVC/h264 or not.