Google have changed the face of the phone industry, by buying a big chunk of it. £7.6 billion quid buys them Motorola Mobility, the hardware division spun off by Motorola in an emergency amputation designed to stanch the flow of red ink from the company’s coffers.
The acquisition is Google’s biggest ever outlay but they get plenty for their money: a full hardware production capacity and 17,000 patents (with another 7,000 pending.) This legal armour is likely the real reason behind the buyout. Intellectual Property (IP) rights have become ammunition in patent conflicts longer, more drawn out and infinitely more painful than trench warfare for everyone involved. After losing out on Nortel Network’s patents Google clearly want to get what they can.
Some say that this means Google will build their own phone, and instigate wailing and gnashing of teeth for all Android-owners, but that’s a ridiculous fear. Even if they do build something it’d still be Motorola-style, on entry in an army of Androids. Android is already winning the operating system wars, and the absence of a single master handset is exactly why: Apple sells more of a single handset, but more in total use Google’s software.
When you’ve got HTC, Samsung, Sony and others not only volunteering but actively competing to build your best phone, telling them to stand back while you try yourself would be more idiotic than telling the SAS to back off being held in a volatile hostage situation. Besides, a single Google phone would have to go one-on-one against the iPhone. Which is how cellular phones commit suicide.