“On August 3, 2012, Motorola Mobility (Motorola), a wholly owned subsidiary of Google Inc. (Google), determined that it would reduce its headcount by approximately 4,000 out of a total of about 20,000 employees. Two-thirds of the reduction is set to occur outside of the U.S. In addition, Motorola plans to close or consolidate about one-third of its 90 facilities, as well as simplify its mobile product portfolio—shifting the emphasis from feature phones to more innovative and profitable devices.
These changes are designed to return Motorola’s mobile devices unit to profitability, after it lost money in fourteen of the last sixteen quarters. That said, investors should expect to see significant revenue variability for Motorola for several quarters. While lower expenses are likely to lag the immediate negative impact to revenue, Google sees these actions as a key step for Motorola to achieve sustainable profitability.”
Google, Inc. – Current Report.
“more innovative and profitable devices” sounds like more smart phones and tablets and other gadgets. They are moving from hard-wired computers to stored-programme computers with everything getting “smarter”. Amen. That’s a reasonable response to changes in the market unlike Nokia allowing itself to be absorbed by M$ without a fight. It could also be that M$’s “surface” will have a tough competitor besides Samsung. Good. Competition is good, good for consumers and in the long run good for competitors. Even M$ will have to work for a living from now on.
see also Motorola to cut 4,000 employees as it focuses on high-end devices
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“That’s a reasonable response to changes in the market unlike Nokia allowing itself to be absorbed by M$ without a fight.”
Motorola has economic problems and consequently gets bought by Google (without a fight) who then fires one in five employees. You appear to think that’s fine. Oh, and their strategy? Get away from the cut-throat “feature phone” market and farther into the more lucrative smartphone market.
Nokia still has economic problems, too, but they are still an independent company. You appear to think that’s bad. Oh, and their strategy? Get away from the cut-throat “feature phone” market and farther into the more lucrative smartphone market. The world is full of surprises
Just another example of double standards. Or probably just schizophrenia.
When MS wants to produce Surface, they abuse OEMs. When Google wants to produce Android smartphones, they do good to the market, to human moral, and feed hungry children.
First it was “8 is bad for desktop, but Android is ready for desktop”. Now this.
Really, Pogson, you should think twice before you post.
ch wrote:
“Nokia still has economic problems, too, but they are still an independent company.”
There’s no double standard here. You’re kidding yourself, but not us, if you think Microsoft and Nokia are not joined at the hip. Nokia’s stock just hasn’t tanked enough for Microsoft to buy the company. Don’t worry, they will.
Phenom wrote, “you should think twice before you post”.
Google has done nothing to undermine users of Android/Linux. OEMs who use Android/Linux are at no disadvantage compared to Google. M$’s slaves, OTOH, have to pay for the OS licence while M$ gets it free… Even Acer who thinks M$’s Surface may be no problem at $500 is forgetting that $500 is gone from the market… so M$ hurts OEMs several ways with Surface.
“You’re kidding yourself, but not us, if you think Microsoft and Nokia are not joined at the hip.”
Reality: You’re kidding yourself if you think Microsoft and Nokia are joined at the hip. Of course, in your little mind a phone company producing Windows phones must be “joined at the hip” with MS, no other explanation is possible.
“Nokia’s stock just hasn’t tanked enough for Microsoft to buy the company. Don’t worry, they will.”
Nope, there’s no reason for MS to do so. Nokia is already producing quite good Windows phones, and MS doesn’t want to be seen as a competitor by the other OEMs producing Windows phones.
The Surface story is something different: MS simply doesn’t trust the PC makers to come up with really good and innovative hardware for Win8, so they do it themselves. And if you look at Acer et al., they mostly just use the reference designs from Intel etc. – heck, Intel had essentially to show them how to build “Ultrabooks” ! That’s the problem with a market dominated by “cheaper! cheaper!”: Innovation is too expensive (and gets left to Apple).
Post #5, what a joke!
“Post #5, what a joke!”
Post #6, what a jerk!
Google has done nothing to undermine users of Android/Linux.
Do you really believe the company that exploited Safari to spy on users against their wishes is respecting Android users?
In your leisure moments, Mr. Pogson, you might dredge up a copy of In Search of Excellence wherein a fellow named Tom Peters (and maybe a friend or two) analyzed and discussed success factors in what were, at the time, consider “excellent” companies.
One precept was, as I recall, “Stick to you knitting!” which meant that companies should stay in their areas of expertise and prior success once found. Google seems to be deviating from this in a big way with Motorola which is a business as far removed from Google’s bread and butter as one can imagine anything.
If you recall last month’s debacle for Microsoft where they took a $6B loss on aQuantive assets, which was an attempt by Microsoft to get into the digital advertising game, which they know nothing about, you might see a hint of what bad things can happen when you stick your fingers into something that you do not understand. Google is going to get burnt, in my opinion. Tell me you think not.
Clarence wrote, “Google is going to get burnt, in my opinion. Tell me you think not.”
Not. Google knows its competency is in search. It was Apple and M$ that attacked them, so they needed Motorola’s patents. I expect Google will allow the expertise in Motorola to thrive. If anything this acquisition shows Google is seeking relevance for Android/Linux. In-house feedback from an established outfit will make Android/Linux better than ever. Other members of OSI will see Google has a dog in the fight/motivation to succeed. I don’t see Samsung fearing Motorola and others will see the acquisition as proof that Google is in it for the long run. It’s all part of a healthy ecosystem.
I don’t see any downside for Google. In fact there is huge downside for Apple and M$. I expect M$ will lose “partners” as the Android/Linux group grows stronger in a year or two.
I don’t see any downside for Google
Well, as I said, they put $12B into buying Motorola. If it turns out to be a lost cause, and it is losing money, that’s Google’s downside.
You say they bought it for the patents, but their LOB is advertising and none of those patents apply. Rather, the patents are mostly good for squabbles over Android vs Apple or Microsoft patents, but Android itself is not a money maker for Google.
Given the history of the patent wars surrounding Android, Google is not going to win anything with or without Motorola. They have offered to settle on the OS issues already, paying a much smaller license fee than others who have settled and trying to collect some patent license fees for XBox.
None of that is worth 12B though.
@ldman “Post #6, what a jerk!” gives us a sample of his creativity. What do you say @ldman, want to go at it for about 20 posts? Or how about just posting a link to one of our previous engagements. Either way you lose.
Phenom Google has been very careful to avoid undermining other OEM’s. Nexus brand what is the lead Google brand for Android any Android OEM can choose to have a device released as.
Ivan
“Do you really believe the company that exploited Safari to spy on users against their wishes is respecting Android users?”
Google was not the only one using that hole in Safari.
Anyone using this http://samy.pl/evercookie/ also does. This this is a jackhammer that minor flaw it will drive straight threw and its prior to the do not track stuff so it don’t obey that.
Google got hit for not updating code base to support the new do not track.
Ivan all advertising companies this include Microsoft by the way wish to track users. Even that Internet explorer in Windows 8 says do not track it will still report a unique ID that was generated when the machine was installed. MS stand on do not track is kinda double sided here. Microsoft basically saying we will block anyone else placing a tracking cookie yet we will build one in by default that the user cannot remove or disable.
What Google got caught for its bad. What Microsoft is doing with Windows 8 Internet Explorer I see as worse.
ch
“Innovation is too expensive”
In x86 yes it is. Intel designs the chipset and cpu so you are basically stuck using what Intel designs.
Arm companies can go off and have there own custom altered chips made without too much of a overhead.
Cheapest arm 1.5 Ghz duel core SOC is 7 USD a unit most expensive Arm 2.0 G SOC is 35 USD a unit.
The price difference between x86 and Arm basically means you have no money to innovate if you go x86. Also due to only 3 licensed makers of x86 producing chips your options are highly limited. There are 4 licensed makers total of x86. IBM(who is not producing any x86), VIA, Intel and AMD. Nvidia does have a license to produce some chipsets in x86 but is not allow to make a x86 cpu.
You go over to arm and you have 20 different providers. All able to customise.
Most of the innovates with ARM also have there own chip fabrication.
ch
“MS simply doesn’t trust the PC makers to come up with really good and innovative hardware for Win8″
This is not the problem. ARM 32 bit is an asshole. I know that is strong language. But it is. They are fixing in 64 bit arm chips.
32 bit arm you cannot probe the hardware to see what is there. Attempt to do so you might hit a fuse-able link so bricking the chip forever. So for every arm SOC in existence that you wish to ship on you have to product something that is unique per device. A bootloader that tells the OS what in heck its running on.
Next video cards in Arm are not like you PC ones. The GPU can be from one maker the Media accelerator from another the output from another. These can be unique wired up per SOC. I do mean unique wired up per soc because some mad bugger used programmable logic gates of some form to define the interlinks. Video cards in arm are nothing like your PC you are talking thousands to millions of variation that your OS has to cope with.
So basically Microsoft is stuck with ARM. If they release to OEM’s the OEMs will want to use many different ARM chips so they can hammer down the price that will cause MS OS development budget to blow out. You could poor billions into it and not see it again. Also MS OS development has a problem lot of ARM chip makers release the specs to there to their hardware and expect end OEM to implement.
I am looking forwards to 64 bit arm chips they at long last include a operation in the cpu to go tell me what your are. Yes insane with ARM chips there is not one single arm chip query for a 32bit ARM chip to tell you want it is that is standard.
Thank god for arm going into the Server room. Its going to solve arm chips biggest bug bear. If Microsoft waits for that its another 12 months delay on products in market.
Its when arm goes from 32 bit to 64 bit when normal Linux distributions will be able to play simpler on arm chips.
EFI on ARM does not work on a lot of SOC. Since the video output on a lot of them only likes being activated once per power up. So you go straight into OS not a bootloader of any form that displays anything. Windows 8 on arm require EFI that blocks a stack of arm chips being used.
Basically arm + Windows equals a huge stack of headaches ch.
Clarence Moon wrote, “Android itself is not a money maker for Google.”
Android/Linux and advertising and paid search on the expanded number of clients in the world is a huge money-maker for Google.
A couple of years ago there were ~1000 million client PCs in the world. Today there are close to twice as many thanks to Google. Also, Google is not locked out my monopoly on Android/Linux devices… That’s priceless. Expect a huge surge in Google’s revenues within a year or so. All those clients are a playground for Google’s revenue-generators. The fact that Google can make revenue when a person is mobile could also double Google’s reach. Where’s the downside?
Google is not locked out my monopoly on Android/Linux devices… That’s priceless
Rather simplistic, even for a Google fan, Mr. Pogson, but I am not going to change your mind, I know, that is a hopeless task.
Even so, I might point out that Facebook’s valuations suffered somewhat from the realization that far too much of its activity was on phones and the small screens denied the real estate needed for ad revenues, making Facebook somewhat less attractive to investors. To a lesser extent that is a problem for Google as well. Their charge-for click sources do not present anywhere near as seductively on the small screen.
Also, it is rather vague as to think that Google would be locked out of a non-Android device. That has not happened ever, even with Apple essentially owning the phone and tablet space and Microsoft owning the PC space. Google, I think, doesn’t have to defend against such a possibility, but maybe it makes for a good bogey man to scare young FLOSS fans.
The “Stick to your knitting!” issue is lost on you as well, I sense. We shall see who is more correct as time evolves. Maybe Google will become world renown for its tablets and phones and its search business will pale in comparison. Or maybe it will crash and burn, bled to death by a senseless effort to get into OS, phones, and tablets, causing it to neglect its bread and butter. Or maybe it will just eventually get out of those businesses, losing tens of billions in investment, but having enough cash to weather that sort of storm.
Either way you lose
How on earth could one ever win such a contest, Mr. Kozbear? You suggest that your life’s talent lies in being obnoxious, evidenced by people viewing you with disgust, and claim victory whenever anyone expresses disdain about your posts.
Perhaps you could ask Mr. O for a discourse on the sorts of psychotic disorders account for such behavior, he seems to have the time and inclination for such things.
Clarence Moon wrote:
“How on earth could one ever win such a contest, Mr. Kozbear?”
Good point.