Interesting set of moves by Google. Few observations
1. A lot of people are fixated on the sales prices and the $9.5 Billion “loss”. Contrary to gloating from Apple fans, looks like in the final analysis Google paid about $3 Billion for “majority” of the Motorola Patents. Not a terrible deal.
2. Apart from the patents, one reason for the Motorola purchase was to provide some competition to Samsung. Given Samsung’s dominance of the Android platform it was going to be problematic for Google in the future. This deal now creates a solid competitor to Samsung. Lenovo is one of the very few Chinese companies that have created a global brand. There are a lot of fantastic Chinese companies that are big but are unknown outside of China. So, with the Lenovo angle, Google gets a strong competitor to Samsung and also a partner to compete within the Chinese market (companies like Xiaomi which are non-Google Android).
3. The mobile market is like the PC market circa 2004, that is it is maturing and has a few years before brutal competition is going to drive down all profits. The future is connected devices, robotics and other ‘intelligent’ machines. With the Nest and Boston Dynamics purchase, Google has the team and the chance to build the next great hardware/software stack ground up and be well positioned for the big markets in the next decade.
All in all, good set of moves for Google. Alas, Apple in contrast reminds me of Microsoft in the early ‘00s. Hugely profitable but fixated on the current ‘ecosystem’ and extending and controlling it. Microsoft’s fixation on the windows ecosystem proved to a huge distraction and ultimately made them miss the internet/advertising and the mobile markets both which proved to be gigantic compared to the windows franchise.