Google To Acquire Motorola Mobility For $12.5 Bill 578
zacharye writes "Google and Motorola Mobility have announced an agreement whereby Google will acquire Motorola for $12.5 billion. The acquisition price equates to $40 per share of Motorola stock, or a premium of 63% over Friday's closing price. The move is considered to be an effort that will better-align Google to compete with Apple's iPhone, which currently owns two-thirds of profits among the world's top-8 smartphone vendors..."
That's one way to stop royalty payments.
is it just me (Score:5, Insightful)
Or did shit just get real? :-)
Re:I for one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the only other decent Phone OS options get you iPwned, or Windows 7 (good ideas, easy development, complete lack of polish or apps), and, oh yeah, BlackBerry, I'm glad of it.
And for tablet, the options are one fewer for now.
I for one am GLAD google didn't stick to just search engines.
Royalty payments. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's one way to stop royalty payments.
That's also one way to keep OTHER PHONE MANUFACTURERS from extorting royalty payments.
If only that also worked against Microsoft...
Re:Not a bad chioce (Score:5, Insightful)
They may be great phone (hw) manufacturers, but in terms of software they are very, very incompetent, including wasting time on 'customization' that only bother the consumer and refusing to release updates (while Cyanogenmod runs circles around them)
I absolutely DON'T trust any of them to write a single line of code. Yes, I know how these companies operate.
Re:Not a bad chioce (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:is it just me (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yes it can. If the terms for Google's new IP are up for renewal or renegotiation, you can expect cross-licensing deals and all sorts of things protecting Android phones and devices.
What this doesn't protect against is trolls like Mark Small, Nathan Myhrovld and all those. "Defensive" patents are a useless strategy against trolls since they have nothing to gain by cross-licensing any tech.
You know, if the incentive for copyrights and patents are to encourage creativity, then it certainly wouldn't hurt anything if the creators were not allowed to sell their intellectual property.
Re:I for one... (Score:2, Insightful)
Monopoly. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Re:I for one... (Score:4, Insightful)
I for one think that Google should stick to search engines.
It wouldn't too much surprise me if Google would actually prefer a world where they could do that. It's something that they are already good at, where getting patent-trolled seems to be less of a risk, and where their customer goodwill is probably at its highest.
Strategically, though, that tactic Has Problems in the medium to long term. If, increasingly "search" means something integrated into the shell of your lockdown iAppliance, or Microsoft OmniSuite 2012, Google becomes dependent on the goodwill of intermediaries, who have plenty of 'not as good; but they would tongue-wash our Ferrari for a chance to be our search provider' options to choose from.
Their various extensions into other markets, while probably driven partially by restless capital, also tend to be into areas that are calculated to enhance customer's abilities to continue to access core Google properties without involving intermediaries who have much to gain by either forcing Google out or forcing Google to pay for the privilege of remaining in.
Re:Hardware vs Software (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see the patent battles now:
Google: we have patent "using radio waves to provide mobile telephony".
Apple: we have patent "making something in a rectangular shape with 1 button and rounded edges"
I still think all the vague patents need to be scrapped, but that won't affect any of the new Google "real invention" patents they've just acquired.
Re:I for one... (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one think that Google should stick to search engines.
They'd probably die.
Yes they are good at search.. but if that search is running on someone elses platform, and that platform is becoming more and more controlled (phones) .. they need to at least have their leg in the door.
That and at a certain size diversification is usually a good idea.
Re:I for one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Um. Because monopoly doesn't even kind of mean what you seem to think it means.
Apple isn't even close to a monopoly in either of its two biggest market-share products, iPod (75% I think?) and ITMS (largest single music seller, though I don't know what % that is). There are countless viable substitutions people can buy if they want to. There is no coercive force in play making it so you need to or must buy their products (compare and contrast this to Microsoft during its monopolist days, where it was incredibly difficult to buy a new computer without paying Microsoft a fee, and with any competitors software pre-installed).
Yes, its a vertically-integrated product line, but that is NOT the same thing as having a monopoly. "iPhone" is not the whole of a market, it is but one of a number of viable competitors. The App Store may be the only way to get native apps onto the device, but that doesn't mean Apple has an "iPhone monopoly" they are abusing to extend one market into another. The iPhone is not a market: there is plenty of choice out there for those who want to buy something else.
Monopolies are not illegal: only monopolies obtained or maintained through certain prohibited practices (which for single firms and not cartels are rather few and hard to prove: but you can't argue Apple with its industry-envied margins is engaging in predatory pricing, which is one of the things single firms can get bitten for doing under antitrust law), and using the power of a monopoly in one market to extend into another.
In no way does Apple fit into any of these categories (the only place you could even argue it is the App Store and its relationship to the iphone, except as Android supporters will tell you, iPhone is anything but a monopoly. You have to have a monopoly before you can use a monopoly to bad ends: and "monopoly" does not translate into, "the only person to make this particular thing that others are aggressively competiting with", even if "this particular thing" is the what you're making your addons for).
Re:Didn't see this one coming (Score:5, Insightful)
I keep seeing people claim that locked bootloaders are a carrier demand... When this is clearly NOT the case.
Across ALL carriers, at least in the United States:
None of the Samsung Galaxy S line have locked bootloaders. (Tab 7s may be mildly locked?) The exception is the Galaxy Tab 10.1 line, which actually has randomly locked bootloaders for the non-carrier-distributed wifi version. (Don't know about the Verizon LTE variant). Even then, the bootloader locking is fairly minimal. The closest to "bootloader locking" I've seen in a Samsung Android phone is locking out flashing alternate bootloaders (Infuse 4G), but never a bootloader that locked out flashing any kernel or userland you wanted.
A small number of HTCs came out locked in early 2011 - HTC quickly reversed this decision after user outcry. The locked phones were distributed across multiple carriers.
Nearly all Motorola Android phones are locked down, regardless of carrier.
Motorola may claim it's the carrier - but if you look at the trends across carriers vs. trends across manufacturers, the trend CLEARLY follows the manufacturer and not the carrier.
Re:Didn't see this one coming (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that they do have a pet OEM, will Motorola simply be the permanent bestest-ever-flagship-development-buddy, or will Google take the gamble of alienating 3rd party OEMs and increasingly close/lengthy delay everything that isn't GPL2/Linux kernel, to improve their Android devices relative to 3rd party ones?
They don't have much of a choice about the Linux-derived stuff(unless they feel like migrating to an entirely different kernel, which wouldn't make much sense) or busybox, or about previously released Apache-license Android-specific components; but nothing obliges them to refrain from letting free releases of most of the Android userspace and libraries(ie. the stuff that actually makes Android useful as such, rather than as a slightly weird embedded linux variant) rot...(consider the OSX analogy: the Darwin kernel stuff and many of the underlying unixy bits are freely available as BSD or GPL; but everything that makes OSX OSX, rather than just a weirdo BSD fork, is closed up tight. Architecturally, nothing stops Google from doing the same with Android, if it suits them.)
I'm hoping that Motorola is going to be used as a 'model design'/flagship house, along with a source of defensive patents; with 3rd party OEMs and merry ROM-cookers getting more or less complete access; but that isn't a given.
Re:Didn't see this one coming (Score:4, Insightful)
They've got pretty much the best US cell network, which gives them a strong position to sell voice and data contracts at aggressive prices, why do they have to puke all over the devices that connect to it?
Re:is it just me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Didn't see this one coming (Score:4, Insightful)
I bet other Android manufacturers are even more worried, now that Google owns their own hardware too. Suddenly all the Android manufacturers are using a competitors product and then trying to fight against them too. This is also why Nokia's stock price is rising up. It's bad times for those other Android vendors, and I think they're already looking at something else than Android.
I'm pretty sure Google would be aware of that concern; they've already stated that it will remain as a separate business, and I expect that's because the last thing they want to do is be seen to be competing with their own partners. I'd guess this purchase was forced by the patent situation and not because Google really wants to get into manufacture.
Re Nokia, I'm not seeing that much change in their stock price. Yes, they're up and a bit today, but that only covers the previous months decline... but maybe I'm missing something.
Re other Android vendors, they'll have picked Android because it's in demand and they will have weighed that up against potentially having less control. They could still fork if it's a big problem though which is more than they could do if they'd gone with Window Mobile (or whatever it's called these days). Also, despite Nokia now being in MSs pocket and basically being the "preferred" partner, there still seem to be other manufacturers willing to go with winmo... so by extension, I wouldn't expect much change over on the Android side of things either.
25,000 patents (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/15/google_ceo_anticompetitive_apple_microsoft_forced_motorola_deal.html
25,000 patents. Do you think they're going to be used defensively to hold off lawsuits? For $12.5 billion, I doubt it - they have to make that money back somehow. Therefor, the next question is "is the Slashdot crowd going to continue supporting Google once they start flexing their new patent portfolio muscle?"
Things Google should do (Score:3, Insightful)
Things Google should do that will benefit both Android users AND Google:
1.End all deals between Motorola and Microsoft/Yahoo to make Bing or Yahoo the default search engine on Motorola Android phones. Restore Google as the default search engine on these phones. Good for consumers who get full Google apps on all Motorola android phones and good for Google because they get more people using Google search and more eyeballs for Google ads.
2.Start unlocking bootloaders on all Motorola phones. Good way to make tech geeks love your phones and recommend them to all and sundry. (think about how much community support the first Droid got because of its unlocked bootloader vs how much the first Milestone with its locked bootloader got)
3.Throw away all your legacy phone platforms and standardize on Android for mid to high end phones (including anything with a web browser, email client etc as well as any phone that would have had a Java VM if it was based on a non-Android OS stack). Bring in a simple cheap new OS for dumbphones that dont have web browsing, Java or data connectivity.
Good for consumers (since they get more Android phones at the market points that used to be occupied with mid-high-end featurephones like the RAZR) and good for Google since they save money by abandoning work on a whole bunch of code from the various legacy OSs (including web browsers and Java VMs)
4.Threaten to use the combined Google+Motorola patent portfolio against Apple products like the iPhone and iPad unless Apple stops suing Android vendors. This is good for Google since (if Apple does the deal) it means less risk of being sued over Android and less patent royalties that would need to be paid. Good for consumers since patent royalties increase the cost of devices.
Even better would be for Google to create an Android defensive patent pool. Anyone working with Google on Android (including HTC, Samsung, Dell, LG etc) would be able to join the pool with any mobile device/OS/etc patents they want to contribute. Google would contribute relavent patents from the Google pool plus whatever the new Motorola pool has. Any Android vendor that is sued over an Android handset gets to use the entire Android patent pool as a counter-attack.
Re:is it just me (Score:4, Insightful)
So this is strictly a strategic move to corner the Mark-of-the-Beast market? :)
Re:Didn't see this one coming (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet other Android manufacturers are even more worried, now that Google owns their own hardware too. Suddenly all the Android manufacturers are using a competitors product and then trying to fight against them too. This is also why Nokia's stock price is rising up. It's bad times for those other Android vendors, and I think they're already looking at something else than Android.
I'm pretty sure Google would be aware of that concern; they've already stated that it will remain as a separate business, and I expect that's because the last thing they want to do is be seen to be competing with their own partners. I'd guess this purchase was forced by the patent situation and not because Google really wants to get into manufacture.
Of course they say that; what do you expect? Companies have teams of lawyers and PR professionals whose whole job is to come up with the right things to say.
The question is - why do you automatically believe it? I doubt you'd give any other company the same benefit of the doubt. Did you assume Comcast was being completely forthright with everything it said while purchasing NBC?