Interesting news, of course. It's just plain a given that part of the puzzle here is Motorola Mobile's patent portfolio. That part of it is also good news for HTC, Samsung, etcetera. But what's next from here? Will google start manufacturing its own line of phones?
Calin Grecu said this may be a play for the brand, but that's clearly wrong. Motorola's brand is not _that_ great, and google has one of the most powerful brands, second only to apple and perhaps nike. They did also inherit a handset maker so whether Google is going to call them Google phones or motorola phones, the question becomes: Will google start making phones themselves? If yes, that's not going to make Samsung, HTC, and other android handset makers happy. However, at this point I'm fairly sure Google wants to make Android grow marketshare more than earn money off of it, and making their own sets in bulk is likely to do the reverse, as it will probably scare off HTC and friends. One could argue by having full control over the phone they can create a better experience, but they in effect already have this - the NexusX line is developed by HTC or Samsung, but the software side is 100% google-driven. That kind of reasoning (engage a splashy takeover to increase control over the process) makes far more sense if google bought a major telco. So, looking at it like that, they just dropped 12,000 million dollars on a patent portfolio. Boy. That's hard to comprehend, isn't it? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/javaposse/-/MZPaCIBZPaIJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
