Motorla doesn’t get a whole lot of love these days, partially due to the fact that people are waiting to see what Google is going to do with them assuming that Google gets approval to gobble up the fledging handset vendor. With so many awesome devices out on the market from the likes of Apple, HTC, and Samsung, do people still even buy Motorola devices? Besides the RAZR, which came out during the last few seconds of 2011, can you name any Motorola hardware that had a meaningful impact in 2011? Yea, not so easy now is it? Anyway, the company has just announced that during the last three months of last year, better known as the holiday shopping season, they shipped 10.5 million phones, of which 5.3 million were smartphones. That’s pretty pathetic considering that they’re an international player. It’s assumed that Samsung shipped 35 million smartphones during the same quarter, and there are many analysts betting Apple will also hit that 35 million figure, so 5.3 million … really?
This begs the question, what exactly does Google want with Motorola? Is it really just a patent play or do they want to turn the company around and make them a viable competitor? Benedict Evans, an independent analyst, recently posted a startling image to Twitter (above) along with a very important question: Is Android driving Samsung or is Samsung driving Android? If Samsung is indeed responsible for the huge success of Android, then Google should rightly be scared of that success since Samsung can just turn on a dime and become the largest promoter of Windows Phone or even their home grown Bada OS.
Watch this space. We don’t see Google facing any hurdles with government entities regarding their purchase of Motorola, and we definitely don’t see Google purchasing Motorola simply because they want their patents. There’s a story that’s not being told here.