Wow. FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller, the go-to blogger for analysis of the mobile patent wars, says that Google has given Motorola Mobility, which it’s in the process of acquiring, permission to seek an injunction preventing Apple from selling the iPhone 4S and iCloud. Steve Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson he was willing to go “thermonuclear” on Android; the longer these lawsuits last and the nastier they get, the more the whole thing does start to feel like warfare.
Tag Archives | Motorola
Reminder: Motorola is Not Part of Google
I keep forgetting that Google, which agreed to buy Motorola Mobility last August, doesn’t yet own it. In fact, anti-trust regulators in both the U.S, and Europe are still going over the deal. Which means that we still don’t know what the implications will be of Google owning one of the largest makers of Android-based devices.
It is, by the way, fascinating how many sites reported the merger as a done deal the moment it was announced in August. Nope. Months later, it remains a proposed deal, and the chances that t won’t go through, while not huge, are more than zero.
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More on the Droid RAZR
When I wrote about the new Droid RAZR this morning I hadn’t seen one in person. A few hours later, I visited with representatives of Motorola and Verizon and got a demo and a bit of hands-on time.
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Hey, There’s a New RAZR!
The first thing I noticed about Motorola and Verizon Wireless’s new Android phone was the name. The Droid RAZR is a neat nod to one of the most iconic phones of the pre-iPhone era. (What’s next–the Droid Star-Tac?)’
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Me, Elsewhere
I haven’t written as much here recently as I like to, but I have a good excuse: I’ve been hard at work writing for other sites. Three new stories are up today:
* At TIME.com, I reviewed two new Android phones from Motorola: the potent (and battery-hungry) Droid Bionic, and the basic (and thrifty) Triumph.
* TIME also asked me to try and make sense of the drama going on over at AOL and TechCrunch. I’m not even sure if that’s possible, but I tried.
* Over at AllBusiness.com, I wrote about a newish gadget that small businesses seem to be snapping up with the same zea they once adopted IBM PCs and PalmPilots. It’s called the iPad.
Whew! (And stay turned for another bit of related news in the not-too-distant future.)
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The Googmoto Fallout
More Google/Motorola musings: SplatF’s Dan Frommer names winners and losers.
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Googmoto: The Pessimist’s View
The Business Insider’s Henry Blodget thinks the Google-Motorola deal is bold but troubling:
Yes, there’s a chance that Google could pull off a miracle here and transform the Motorola Mobility business into a direct competitor of Apple’s–in which Google gets not only Android distribution, but super-fat iPhone-like profit margins to boot.
But doing that will be super-challenging. Motorola’s current hardware team has displayed none of the magic that Apple’s has. And the more Google tries to mimic that magic, the more Google’s other Android partners will likely rebel against Google’s competitive threat.
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Googmoto: The Optimist’s View
ZDNet’s Larry Dignan has six reasons why Google buying Motorola makes sense. Here’s one of ’em:
And Android boxes in Nokia and RIM. With Motorola, which has some enterprise credibility and Android innovations, Google can enter the enterprise easier. As a result, RIM increasingly looks like the odd man out. Nokia is already under fire as it waits for Windows Phone 7 to gain traction. RIM is betting on QNX as an operating system. Google is indicating that the wireless market is a two-platform race. And those two horses are going to be Android and iOS.
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My First Ten Questions–of Many!–About Google Buying Motorola
Apple buying T-Mobile. Microsoft buying Adobe. We’re all used to reading stuff by tech pundits talking about seismic, world-changing acquisitions in a somewhat fanciful manner. But Google buying Motorola Mobility, the recently-spun-off part of Motorola that makes phones and other consumer hardware, is real–and the most potentially world-changing acquisition in many years. (Compared to this, HP buying Palm was positively humdrum.) If I’d been drinking anything when I read the headline this morning, I would have done a spit-take.
It’s not that it’s a completely unthinkable merger–in fact, it’s existed as a rumor for quite a while. It just seemed really unlikely, until it happened.
Mergers that are supposed to change everything have a lousy track record of changing everything–sometimes, they don’t change anything at all, at least for the better. (They also don’t have a perfect track record of actually happening: we should be careful about assuming this is a done deal until it is.) Right now, I’m still processing the news and asking myself questions. Such as…
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And That’s the Way It Wasn’t
This famous video from 2006 seemed cool at the time. I thought of it when I heard today’s stunner of a news story and re-watched it. And it’s fascinating how much has changed since it was made. (It mentions Friendster but not Facebook.)