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Lenovo to buy Google's Motorola handset division

reuters.com

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Re: Lenovo to buy Google's Motorola handset division

#251

Post by guyzero »

aduitsis wrote: post #250
yetfeo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the advantages of Chromecast over something like Apple TV?

Slightly off-topic rant: In the (European) country that I live in, you can actually buy an Apple TV. Whereas Chromecast simply does not exist. One can argue all day about how awesome Chromecast is, but if you can't buy it, well, it isn't really competitive. And this has happened with a lot of other Google products which where announced with great fanfare in the past. Off-topic, I tried to buy a 1-dollar song the othe…

International releases take time.

Re: Lenovo to buy Google's Motorola handset division

#252

Post by clarky07 »

rjbez17 wrote: post #249
clarky07 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, Apple? Microsoft gets a lot of flack but frankly it has done pretty well. It makes a lot of money in several different divisions outside of windows and office.

Apple has always been a consumer electronics company...they may have a diverse set of consumer electronics, but they aren't truly diveresified. I think a truly diversified company is more like GE, 3M, Samsung, Honda, etc.

I don't think you have to be a conglomerate to have diversified product lines. They were just a PC company for 20 years. Then they added iPod, then iPhone, then iPad. On top of that they have itunes and apps which are by themselves a large growing business. 5 different billion dollar businesses is pretty good.

Google on the other hand has ads. If you want to be generous you can break it out to search and YouTube. Android is obviously huge, but they don't really make money on it. The interesting thing IMO is that they likely would be making more money if they just stayed friendly with Apple. If apple had 80% market share google would be getting far more search traffic.

Re: Lenovo to buy Google's Motorola handset division

#253

Post by mediaman »

goggles99 wrote: post #220
mediaman wrote: post #7

Huge announcement if true, and if this accounts for the entirety of the Motorola purchase that Google made. That means that in less than two years, Google shredded 85% of the $13bn paid for Motorola. At the time, the high price paid was excused for the patents, because the business itself did not generate nearly enough earnings to justify the price. Now, if it is true that the patents are part of the deal (the articl…

> That means that in less than two years, Google shredded 85% of the $13bn paid for Motorola. You did not even make it down to the third paragraph of the article? Under this deal the search giant will keep the majority of Motorola's mobile patents, considered its prize assets. SMH

Your condescension is unwarranted. This originally pointed to an earlier Reuters article on the deal prior to the later story. The later story contains information from the official Google statement.

Prior to the official company statement, sources stated that up to 10,000 patents were being transferred to Lenovo in the deal, which is the majority of the 17,000 believed to be owned by Motorola Mobility. My comment you responded to reflects what was known at the time prior to official announcement of the deal.

I understand it's often easiest to assume that those around you are stupid, especially on the Internet, but I would respectfully request that you at least consider alternatives to what may appear to you as stupidity, and temper your comments to reflect that possibility.

Re: Lenovo to buy Google's Motorola handset division

#254

Post by jotm »

dclara wrote: post #172
jotm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smart TVs aren't a failure yet - I hope Google keeps their plans going. It'll be pretty much like Microsoft's Xbox...

I got confused by you mixing smart TV with Xbox. I still think Smart TV concept and architecture is pretty failed from the market. From SetTopBox to Apple TV to Google TV, whenever I saw there is a box attached to the TV which can receive the TV program from the internet, it looks so weird to me. Maybe that's why it's not popular. Eventually we need to get the TV be real smart and be controlled by the PC instead of s…

I meant it as a comparison to how the Xbox was a failure for a pretty long time until it took off.

TVs with the ability to show a calendar, play Angry Birds and browse Youtube make sense to me, it seems like a natural progression of the good old set top box. If these new TVs run Google's OS, the company will win sooner or later...

Re: Lenovo to buy Google's Motorola handset division

#255

Post by indrax »

josephlord wrote: post #234
corresation wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extremely limited patent actions were pre-Google, and were largely contrived as negotiating tools. Trying to draw anything from that is foolhardy.

Why wouldn't they have used their strongest applicable patents? They may have more similar ones and maybe one or two will hold up but do you really think if they had some powerful non-FRAND ones they wouldn't have used them on Apple or Mircrosoft by now?

We didn't use nukes in Vietnam. The value of the Motorola's patents may be in keeping Apple and Microsoft from using their strongest patents.

Re: Lenovo to buy Google's Motorola handset division

#256

Post by evandena »

dba7dba wrote: post #73
objclxt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how anyone can see selling off a company for $9.5 billion less than you paid for it two years ago as a "smart move". It is prudent to get rid of Motorola now before it eats up even more cash, but the smart thing would have been to never buy the company in the first place.

I agree. Don't care how much money you have or are making annual, but losing 9.5 billion in TWO years doesn't look good. What's google thinking?

As noted a half dozen times throughout the comments, they didn't lose 9.5 billion, it's looking more like possibly 2 billion. But they also had a strong bargaining chip vs Samsung, and will likely reap benefits far exceeding their Moto stake.

Re: Lenovo to buy Google's Motorola handset division

#257

Post by Egregore »

aduitsis wrote: post #250
yetfeo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the advantages of Chromecast over something like Apple TV?

Slightly off-topic rant: In the (European) country that I live in, you can actually buy an Apple TV. Whereas Chromecast simply does not exist. One can argue all day about how awesome Chromecast is, but if you can't buy it, well, it isn't really competitive. And this has happened with a lot of other Google products which where announced with great fanfare in the past. Off-topic, I tried to buy a 1-dollar song the othe…

Same thing with selling apps on play store, it seems that google ignores most of the smaller countries.

Re: Lenovo to buy Google's Motorola handset division

#258

Post by justin66 »

michaelt wrote: post #243
justin66 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has any company the size of Google ever successfully pulled of this sort of diversification? How many companies the size of Google are NOT heavily diversified? Think GE, 3M, etc.

Is Wal-Mart diversified? Is Exxon Mobil? Bank of America?

> Is Wal-Mart diversified?

I know that you thought you were providing a counterexample (which is odd, since I wasn't making some kind of universal claim) but yeah, they are. Branching into groceries represented a pretty bold diversification. I'm pretty sure they've talked about even providing banking services. They're about as diversified as a dedicated brick and mortar retailer can possibly be, and it's not hard to see why: they control their existing niches and they want to continue growing.

Re: Lenovo to buy Google's Motorola handset division

#259

Post by michaelt »

justin66 wrote: post #258
michaelt wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Wal-Mart diversified? Is Exxon Mobil? Bank of America?

> Is Wal-Mart diversified? I know that you thought you were providing a counterexample (which is odd, since I wasn't making some kind of universal claim) but yeah, they are. Branching into groceries represented a pretty bold diversification. I'm pretty sure they've talked about even providing banking services. They're about as diversified as a dedicated brick and mortar retailer can possibly be, and it's not hard to…

I wasn't aiming for a counterexample so much as an illustration of the fact that whether a company is diversified or not is a matter of definition.

Is a company diversified if it operates in related markets in the same sector, like a bank that does retail and business banking? Is a company diversified if operations outside their core business are only a small fraction of their turnover, like an oil company that has a small renewables operation?

If the purpose of diversification is to keep the company afloat if there's a downturn in one market, these properties are important. Being in retail and business banking won't help if the entire banking sector has problems, and 1% of your business won't keep you afloat if the other 99% of your business is sinking.

Re: Lenovo to buy Google's Motorola handset division

#260

Post by dclara »

jotm wrote: post #254
dclara wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got confused by you mixing smart TV with Xbox. I still think Smart TV concept and architecture is pretty failed from the market. From SetTopBox to Apple TV to Google TV, whenever I saw there is a box attached to the TV which can receive the TV program from the internet, it looks so weird to me. Maybe that's why it's not popular. Eventually we need to get the TV be real smart and be controlled by the PC instead of s…

I meant it as a comparison to how the Xbox was a failure for a pretty long time until it took off. TVs with the ability to show a calendar, play Angry Birds and browse Youtube make sense to me, it seems like a natural progression of the good old set top box. If these new TVs run Google's OS, the company will win sooner or later...

I got your point now. So set top box, internet TV died. Now it's the time for smart TV which is controlled by the smart phone. I'm pretty tired about smart phone, too.

If TV is controlled by PC, I can play internet game on it and watch movies with high quality, like in home theater without the high cost.

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