It’s been a while since Google acquired Motorola in a $12.5 deal which was mostly described as a patent play. From then on, Moto released few products most of which failed to impress us, including the new Atrix HD. So I’m wondering – maybe it’s time for Google to completely dump Motorola’s hardware business? After all – it’s not like any of the Nexus devices had Moto’s branding – quite the contrary, the search giant gave few of its partners the spotlight in every Nexus device, whether it was a smartphone (HTC and Samsung) or tablet (Asus).
Google isn’t hardware company
Google isn’t a hardware company and shouldn’t be involved in smartphone/tablet design and production. Making stuff comes with much lower margins than it used to, with Google’s ad business still paying most of the bills for the company.
Other Android makers don’t like the fact that Google owns Motorola
If I were at Samsung, HTC or LG, I would be concerned that Google can now make its own hardware. The Mountain View-based company wants to keep its partners happy so they in turn could keep launching new devices. Sure, Google could leave some part of Motorola to test how the software works across different hardware (get some additional expertise), but that’s like 5% of Motorola.
Who will buy Motorola?
Presuming Google wants to get rid of Motorola’s hardware-making business it has a problem – how will buy it? Without patents Google wants to keep, Moto doesn’t look like a good purchase. Perhaps Microsoft could buy it, perhaps not…
In any case, Motorola with its not-that-impressive portfolio of devices looks more like a cost rather than profit center for Google. What do you think?