Google to Buy Motorola Unit: Android Game Changer?
Google to Buy Motorola Unit: Android Game Changer?
Analysts are calling Google’s announcement on Monday that it plans to buy Motorola Mobility a “game-changer” for its Android smartphone market, and a move that puts it in steeper competition against rival Apple.
The Motorola unit purchase allows Google to "create a range of products that enable very rich, multi-device experiences in the same way that Apple does across iPhone, iPad and Apple TV," Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin told the USA Today.
Google approved on Monday a $12.5 billion deal, its largest to date, to purchase the Motorola Mobility, which creates wireless phones, cable modems, and cable TV boxes. (The deal must clear antitrust review to be final).
Google’s Android already boasts the leading operating system, holding 43 percent of the market compared to Apple’s iOS operating system with 18 percent. But Android’s open-source smartphone software is available to any handset-maker, which means Google has less control over its phones.
More than three dozen cell phone manufacturers currently make Android phones. Google CEO Larry Page says Android would remain open-source and available to other manufacturers, despite the Motorola Mobility purchase, and that Google plans to “run Motorola as a separate business.”
Analysts say that the Motorola deal will finally allow Google to gain more control over some of its phones, at least the ones made by Motorola Mobility that have the Android name.
"They were always getting beaten up by Apple because Apple could control the whole experience — hardware, software, packaging," says Carl Howe, research director at Yankee Group. "Now Google can play that game, too."
This also could help the Android phones be more attractive to app developers, who have reported challenges in creating software for different companies’ Android phones.
Source: “Google Buys Motorola Mobility to ‘Supercharge’ Android OS,” USA Today (Aug. 16, 2011) and “Google’s Deal to Buy Motorola Mobility Could Shake Up Smartphone Market,” The Philadelphia Inquirer (Aug. 16, 2011)
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Posted on August 16, 2011, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment.
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