Piper Jaffray: New Moto X won't draw consumers from iPhone

1356

Comments

  • Reply 41 of 110
    alfiejralfiejr Posts: 1,524member


    constant listening mode ...


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by herbapou View Post


     


     


    I dont like the sound of that...  I see how it can allow some features, but at what price?



     


    oh yeah - just wait!


     


    http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/1/4580718/fbi-can-remotely-activate-android-and-laptop-microphones-reports-wsj

  • Reply 42 of 110
    sockrolidsockrolid Posts: 2,789member


    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post



    Ever since the search giant bought the ailing manufacturer in 2012, widely thought as a move to gain access to the company's patent hoard, Motorola has lost hundreds of millions of dollars for Google as its handsets have fizzled.


     


    Good luck digging out of that $12.5 billion Moto-hole, Google.

  • Reply 43 of 110
    It'll be fun to mess with other's voice activated phones >:-)
  • Reply 44 of 110
    rjc999rjc999 Posts: 69member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by HeyBartender View Post



    It'll be fun to mess with other's voice activated phones >:-)


    If done right, voice fingerprinting should work as well as fingerprint unlocking. Remember, most biometric sensors have been defeated by simple mechanisms (Mythbusters did an episode on it), but eventually the tech got better.

  • Reply 45 of 110
    I will never understand these silly two-hander Hummer phones. This fashion needs to go ahead and fade. Imagine your local IT guy with an Otterbox on this thing trying to jam it into his pocket... It reminds me of how ergonomic Motorola cell phones were in 1990.
  • Reply 46 of 110
    cornchipcornchip Posts: 1,945member
    teejay2012 wrote: »
    Mobile phone eavesdropping NSA + Google personal data collection + 'always listening' Google phone...

    Sounds good. What could go wrong with that?

    I'm sure a few people are simply salivating at the thought.
  • Reply 47 of 110
    kdarlingkdarling Posts: 1,640member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by herbapou View Post


    I dont like the sound of that...  I see how it can allow some features, but at what price?



     


    The phone is just locally listening for a wakeup phrase.  It's not being stored or transmitted.


     


     


    First they have to install (or trick you into installing) a listening app.


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SockRolid View Post


    Good luck digging out of that $12.5 billion Moto-hole, Google.



     


    More like $9.5 billion, since Moto came with (and still has) $3 billion in cash reserves.


     


    Also, Google gets billions in tax write-offs.


     


    Some tax analysts think that the net cost to Google could be as low as $1.5 billion.

  • Reply 48 of 110
    notownnotown Posts: 39member
    Does it recognize the owner's voice? For instance, what's stopping me from getting someone's phone to set an alarm for 3 am or some other mischievous thing? I know if I personally knew someone with this phone, I would have have some fun with them. If the phone gets any major adoption, I could just go out on the street and shout, "ok google now, text my mom and call her fat."
  • Reply 49 of 110
    rjc999rjc999 Posts: 69member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Alfiejr View Post


    yup, as several above note, Moto is competing with SS with the same approach - adding UI gimmicks to android to "differentiate" the X and the S4 from other commodity droid phones. so they are both going after the same market - the gimmick lovers. and don't forget customization! there is no doubt those folks are already droid users anyway. so Google is finally trying to deal with the fact it does all the hard android work but Samsung is making all the android profit. Fight!


     


    Apple has tried a few gimmicks too over the years, yes. but more than ever now it focuses on system-wide and ecosystem-wide new features that are really useful. and i expect even more to be unveiled this Fall with iOS 7/Mavericks etc. for great example, the anticipated fingerprint reader home button on the next generation of iPhone/iPad will likely be integrated with iCloud Keychain too (which also supports credit cards as well as passwords, and perhaps Passbook as well). what a powerful universal tool that would be! something every one of us would really want to use - a lot.


     


    but i'm sure the Verge and all the other gadget head tech sites will give the Moto X a 9.0 score, just like the new Nexus tablet. new gimmicks always turn them on.


     



     


    Always on Google Now with excellent battery life isn't a gimmick, it is a system-wide useful feature, one of the most common things people want to do is perform searches, and now it can be done without holding down a button like Siri "Star Trek style".  Siri is actually a gimmick in comparison. It's so slow and cumbersome. Moreover, the X does voice print analysis, and so it unlocks the phone by fingerprinting your voice instead of having to measure your finger. It can also unlock via environment (bluetooth in-car detection), and unlock via NFC token. (proximity to wearable) This will only get better over time.


     


    Moreover, the concept of powering only part of the pixels of the screen to constantly show time and recent notifications based on the contextual CPU sensing that it is visible is much more useful than the constant need to turn on the phone's screen. It actually does what people hope wearable watches do, which is to present information at a glance rather than requiring you to "unlock" something.


     


    Apple is going for the past, biometric sensors, including fingerprint scanners, have long been used on corporate laptops, AuthenTec has been doing this for years.  The future is not having to touch your device at all to get the most useful information. If I have to press the Home button to see what time it is or get the weather, you have failed.


     


    The camera gesture Moto X has is a gimmick IMHO, it could be done better. But Touchless Control, Active Display, and Clear Pixel camera aren't gimmicks.


     


    Samsung's crap is gimmicky in comparison. 

  • Reply 50 of 110

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Slurpy View Post


     


    The irony in that Analysts comment is that from all hands-on reviews I've read, the Moto Xs screen is considered either really bad, or mediocre, (Josh Topolsky from theVerge called it "stunningly bad") while the iPhone 5 still has what is considered one of the best screens on the market. Nothing else about the physical design of this phone is noteworthy. The only noteworthy thing in software is that the mic is always on. Whether most people want this is debatable (I know I don't). Oh, and a camera activation gesture that seems to hardly work. 


     


    Yet, this phone will put "pressure" on Apple in terms of design. Right. 



    You are definitely right about the Moto X screen.  It looks like a bargain basement AMOLED screen, similar in quality of older Samsung Galaxy screens. From a qualitative perspective, even the Galaxy S4 screen trounces this.

  • Reply 51 of 110
    rjc999rjc999 Posts: 69member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by NoTown View Post



    Does it recognize the owner's voice? For instance, what's stopping me from getting someone's phone to set an alarm for 3 am or some other mischievous thing? I know if I personally knew someone with this phone, I would have have some fun with them. If the phone gets any major adoption, I could just go out on the street and shout, "ok google now, text my mom and call her fat."


     


    Yes, you have to train it to recognize your voice in the setup process. It's probably not perfect and will improve over time, I'd expect some failures. The same thing happened in fingerprint scanning, most of them have been easily spoofed.

  • Reply 52 of 110
    matrix07matrix07 Posts: 1,993member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by KDarling View Post


     


    Some tax analysts think that the net cost to Google could be as low as $1.5 billion.



    Why $1.5 Billion? Why not zero? Heck, why not go all the way? With some strange math someone might be able to calculate that Google even get Motolora for free *plus* a billion from it. LOL.


  • Reply 53 of 110
    rjc999rjc999 Posts: 69member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by matrix07 View Post


    Why $1.5 Billion? Why not zero? Heck, why not go all the way? With some strange math someone might be able to calculate that Google even get Motolora for free *plus* a billion from it. LOL.




    They spent $12.5 billion, Motorola had $3 billion in cash and they proceeded to sell the set-top box division for $2.0 billion plus 15% of Arris. Discounting the valuation of Arris holdings, that puts the acquisition costs @ $7 billion. Google considers the patents worth about $5 billion, so that leaves about $2 billion in overlay. 


     


    However, keep in mind, Motorola is a diverse company. The company has a long history of innovation, like Bell Labs and PARC, and even if they fell on hard times, there is value there. Xerox screwed up royalty with the IP they had created at PARC (inventing Smalltalk, GUI, Ethernet, PostScript and LaserPrinters, etc) Xerox now looks like a lost cause, but good stuff is still being done at PARC. If someone bought Xerox and all they ended up with is PARC, it would still be a good deal.


     


    They laughed at Google when they acquired YouTube for $1.6 billion in 2006. Marc Cuban said "only a moron would purchase YouTube". For the next several years, YouTube lost money and it looked like Cuban was right, but who's laughing now?


     


    Moto X was, according to press reports, started 1 year ago. That's a fairly fast product cycle. If I were an Android partner, and looking at Google's history of making good strategic bets (Android another acquisition, AdMob, getting into the ad market early on mobile, etc), I'd be worried about Motorola+Google.

  • Reply 54 of 110
    vvswarupvvswarup Posts: 336member


    I would take what analysts say with a grain of salt. They aren't trend setters. They're trend followers. Analyst estimates for Apple exposed this in the worst way. When the stock was on the way up to $700, it was all unicorns and rainbows. Apple was the darling of Wall Street and it was about to blast off into orbit. You had analysts playing the "who can come up with the highest price target" game. When the stock capitulated, the analyst community was all of a sudden locked into a heated race to the bottom. They did a 180 on Apple and put out story after story about how Apple had no gas in the tank. They were out of ideas and Android was going to bury them. At least no one said Apple was going bankrupt. That wasn't actually possible until a few months ago, because Apple had no debt. 


     


    The point is that sell-side analysts are armchair CEOs who think they can run any company better than the sitting CEO. IMO, the C-level execs and other employees of a company can judge the potential of a product far better than a sell-side analyst. And CEOs aren't idiots. They're not paid massive salaries to make products that have no hope of selling. Until I see otherwise, I'm willing to trust that when a company decides to put out a product, the management has done its due diligence on the product, including industry/competitor analysis to judge selling potential. 

  • Reply 55 of 110
    You're c
    rjc999 wrote: »
    They spent $12.5 billion, Motorola had $3 billion in cash and they proceeded to sell the set-top box division for $2.0 billion plus 15% of Arris. Discounting the valuation of Arris holdings, that puts the acquisition costs @ $7 billion. Google considers the patents worth about $5 billion, so that leaves about $2 billion in overlay. 

    However, keep in mind, Motorola is a diverse company. The company has a long history of innovation, like Bell Labs and PARC, and even if they fell on hard times, there is value there. Xerox screwed up royalty with the IP they had created at PARC (inventing Smalltalk, GUI, Ethernet, PostScript and LaserPrinters, etc) Xerox now looks like a lost cause, but good stuff is still being done at PARC. If someone bought Xerox and all they ended up with is PARC, it would still be a good deal.

    They laughed at Google when they acquired YouTube for $1.6 billion in 2006. Marc Cuban said "only a moron would purchase YouTube". For the next several years, YouTube lost money and it looked like Cuban was right, but who's laughing now?

    Moto X was, according to press reports, started 1 year ago. That's a fairly fast product cycle. If I were an Android partner, and looking at Google's history of making good strategic bets (Android another acquisition, AdMob, getting into the ad market early on mobile, etc), I'd be worried about Motorola+Google.

    You're conveniently forgetting all the quarterly losses from Motorola operations over the past year plus. In total I believe that's another 2 billion in cost to Google.
  • Reply 56 of 110
    matrix07matrix07 Posts: 1,993member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by rjc999 View Post


    They spent $12.5 billion, Motorola had $3 billion in cash and they proceeded to sell the set-top box division for $2.0 billion plus 15% of Arris. Discounting the valuation of Arris holdings, that puts the acquisition costs @ $7 billion. Google considers the patents worth about $5 billion, so that leaves about $2 billion in overlay. 


     



    Again. Why not value patents at $7 Billion then Google had got Moto for free. Whatever the math used, however you want to pat Google's back, the cold hard fact is that Google rushed to make a decision and shelled out almost $10 B. (after minus Moto cash) for a company that's leaking money every quarter.


  • Reply 57 of 110
    quinneyquinney Posts: 2,528member
    gatorguy wrote: »
    I was intrigued enough by this to go* to an Android fan site and see their take on it.

    Judge for yourself: http://bit.ly/143mPWb :lol:



    [SIZE=8px]* For the first time ever, in my life. Had to take a shower afterwards......[/SIZE]
    Google telegraphed as much a few months ago. Apparently any "Google" devices from Moto are still a few months off.

    I always wondered how you got their talking points so promptly.
  • Reply 58 of 110
    rjc999rjc999 Posts: 69member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by matrix07 View Post


    Again. Why not value patents at $7 Billion then Google had got Moto for free. Whatever the math used, however you want to pat Google's back, the cold hard fact is that Google rushed to make a decision and shelled out almost $10 B. (after minus Moto cash) for a company that's leaking money every quarter.




     


    Point is, YouTube was leaking money every quarter too. Someone once calculated that it would have taken YouTube something like 10 years to recoup its purchase price plus losses, and in fact, some people think YouTube is still unprofitable depending on accounting, but what value do you place on owning the world's most watched video site?


     


    Google is in this for the long haul, like Amazon, and short term profit and loss don't drive strategic decisions. I think it is one of the failings of Apple that they hyperfocus on margins. They make paultry few acquisitions, and aren't spending anywhere near the amount of their $100+B warchest on basic R&D that they should be spending. I'm not talking about figuring out how to make the iPhone 7's screen 1mm smaller, I'm talking about *basic* R&D for stuff unrelated to near term products.


     


    You look at IBM, HP, AT&T, Sun, Google, even Microsoft, these are companies that fund basic research labs, some even unrelated to developing a product at all, whose main result is often just academic papers. Apple's main results of R&D tend to be lots of patents. Apple spent $3 billion on R&D in 2012. Google spent $6 billion. Microsoft spent almost $10 billion on R&D in 2012. IBM spent $6.4 billion in 2012. Even HP Labs spends $3 billion.  This buys stuff like next-generation storage advancements, silicon processes, image censors. Apple by contrast effectively outsources their R&D to Korea and Japan. Who's inventing the next generation of flexible displays? Of printable flexible circuits? Not Apple, Apple will be forced to license those.


     


    Maybe Motorola will turn out to be a bust for Google, but I give them credit for trying, and for having a chance at rescuing what was once a great American  company. You know, the company that *invented the cellphone*. That created the communication systems used by NASA. That built (the failed) Iridium satellite phone network. That created the original RAZR design. That built the CPU, you know, that Steve Jobs used for the Macintosh. 


     


    Everything that Google is trying to do, from self driving cars, to stratospheric internet balloons, to building the world's largest neural network for language understanding, or Google Glass, at least they are trying to do something crazy and new. HP is trying to commercial memristors and self-assembling nanostructures. IBM is working on practical quantum computers. All of this stuff might fall on its face. But as the Apple commercial says, here's to the crazy ones.


     


    With Apple's huge warchest of money, they could be doing a lot more amazing things than putting 5 year old fingerprint scanner technology into the home button.

  • Reply 59 of 110
    drblankdrblank Posts: 3,385member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by GregInPrague View Post



    You're c

    You're conveniently forgetting all the quarterly losses from Motorola operations over the past year plus. In total I believe that's another 2 billion in cost to Google.


    They only bought the Mobility Unit, they didn't buy the entire company.

  • Reply 60 of 110
    drblankdrblank Posts: 3,385member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by rjc999 View Post


     


    Point is, YouTube was leaking money every quarter too. Someone once calculated that it would have taken YouTube something like 10 years to recoup its purchase price plus losses, and in fact, some people think YouTube is still unprofitable depending on accounting, but what value do you place on owning the world's most watched video site?


     


    Google is in this for the long haul, like Amazon, and short term profit and loss don't drive strategic decisions. I think it is one of the failings of Apple that they hyperfocus on margins. They make paultry few acquisitions, and aren't spending anywhere near the amount of their $100+B warchest on basic R&D that they should be spending. I'm not talking about figuring out how to make the iPhone 7's screen 1mm smaller, I'm talking about *basic* R&D for stuff unrelated to near term products.


     


    You look at IBM, HP, AT&T, Sun, Google, even Microsoft, these are companies that fund basic research labs, some even unrelated to developing a product at all, whose main result is often just academic papers. Apple's main results of R&D tend to be lots of patents. Apple spent $3 billion on R&D in 2012. Google spent $6 billion. Microsoft spent almost $10 billion on R&D in 2012. IBM spent $6.4 billion in 2012. Even HP Labs spends $3 billion.  This buys stuff like next-generation storage advancements, silicon processes, image censors. Apple by contrast effectively outsources their R&D to Korea and Japan. Who's inventing the next generation of flexible displays? Of printable flexible circuits? Not Apple, Apple will be forced to license those.


     


    Maybe Motorola will turn out to be a bust for Google, but I give them credit for trying, and for having a chance at rescuing what was once a great American  company. You know, the company that *invented the cellphone*. That created the communication systems used by NASA. That built (the failed) Iridium satellite phone network. That created the original RAZR design. That built the CPU, you know, that Steve Jobs used for the Macintosh. 


     


    Everything that Google is trying to do, from self driving cars, to stratospheric internet balloons, to building the world's largest neural network for language understanding, or Google Glass, at least they are trying to do something crazy and new. HP is trying to commercial memristors and self-assembling nanostructures. IBM is working on practical quantum computers. All of this stuff might fall on its face. But as the Apple commercial says, here's to the crazy ones.


     


    With Apple's huge warchest of money, they could be doing a lot more amazing things than putting 5 year old fingerprint scanner technology into the home button.



    If the 5 year old fingerprint technology is updated and it works, then what's the problem?  If Corporate, Government, etc. customers want it, then guess what? That's a big market to not neglect.  Oh, and for a brand new Android phone to come with an old OS is kind of pathetic. I would think that they would at least use 4.3 since that's the latest OS.  THe biggest problem with Android.  They just can't get all of the OEM devices up to the latest OS.  Dysfunctional platform.


     


    A research lab is only good if what comes out of it is actually successful and the company that owns the research lab knows what to do with the technology.  Companies need to manage their research properly so they aren't going into a direction that doesn't make sense for the companies future plans.  Google is dumb for dumping money into the self driving car.  The car companies have been doing their own research as well as Universities.  Heck, there's one University that has a self driving car running off an iPad, so Apple would probably be better off dumping R&D money elsewhere than something that others are doing using their technology.  Self driving cars isn't going to be approved where we can walk in a showroom and buy a car anytime in the distant future.  It's a LONG ways away.  Look at how long it took for cars to have 4 wheel disc brakes with AntiLock.  A LONG time. It's quite a bit more expensive to do self driving cars with all of the equipment they need to add for steering, braking, acceleration.

Sign In or Register to comment.