maestro64

bigmushroom said:

I am not sure Motorola was such a bad deal for Google:

- They sold Motorola to Lenovo for 2.9 billion (as the article correctly reports).
- They also sold the cable modem and set-top box business to Arris for 2.35 billion in 2012.
- Motorola had 3 billion in cash.

So once you factor everything out (plus some tax assets apparently), it appears they lost not more than 3.5 billion on the deal. A nice article is here:

http://bgr.com/2014/02/13/google-motorola-sale-interview-lenovo/

So one view is that they paid about 3.5 billion for Motorola patents - which is less than Apple and Microsoft paid when they teamed up to buy Nortel patents for 4.5 billion.

But more importantly, Motorola was about to sue other Android manufacturers (Samsung, HTC). Google appeared to buy Motorola to end that threat because Android was not yet the dominant alternative to iOS. If Motorola would have sued everyone else, it could have disrupted the whole eco-system.

So I don't think Google regrets buying Motorola - it might have been a defensive move (getting more patents, prevent a patent war with other Android OEMs) but it wasn't hugely expensive in the end.

Here is part of the deal you left out, they had to help finance the deal, they were part owner in Arris and they had to get Comcast to pony up money as well to make the deal go through. Everyone would like to say they did not lose money, they did, because the pumped lots of money into Motorola before they killed it off. I suspect they had to help Lenovo do the deal as well. The big loss was the fact they paid $12B for the IP and the FTC and EU rendered the patent workless and they said Google was bared from suing its competitors.

The Motorola deal was plan B in the IP wars, they were going after the Nortel IP and lost to Apple and its friend so they turned around and did the Motorola deal within 72 hour, they did not do any due diligence, if they had they would have found out the courts and FTC was about to hand Motorola its ass for trying to Force Apple to turn over all its GUI IP on the iPhone to license Motorola Cellular patents. Apple offered Motorola $4B for a license on all it cell phone FRAND and non-FRAND IP as a one time fee and Motorola could never come after Apple in the future. But Motorola was being vindictive and wanted the $4B plus a cross license on all of APPL non-FRAND IP. Apple report this to the FTC when Google both Motorola and the rest if history.

EsquireCats said:

If they couldn't make Motorola work, how are they going to make HTC work?

exactly, Motorola was top to bottom a better company and Google could not manage to hold it together and make it work.

Also, very few people are aware of this, HTC got its start in cellphone manufacturing thanks to Motorola. Motorola use to have HTC design and build their low end feature phones for emerging markets. Motorola would provide them a design spec and a product ID and they would go off and design and build the phones for Motorola which Motorola turned around and sold around the world.

I am taking better over or under 18 month on this being a royal failure, next bet do they shut it down or sell it, how much of a loss will they take. I think last one may not be a big issue, since it was not a $12B purchase like Motorola.

Folks, when looking at these pictures you need to consider some photographic techniques. The iPhone 7+ is in Portrait mode as such you would not expect to have fine details. If you have even gone to professional photographer and get a portrait done, they use a little bit of soft focus, the image is a little softer to look at. I am not going to argue the color correctness, as one person pointed out, you would have to see the original to know which one is closer. I tend to lean toward the iPhone since it is more soft and muted to the Samsung which is bright and sharp. Apple most likely consulted professional photographer and image processing people and had them advise on what look correct from the professional stand point not use laymen who have no clue what we may or may not be looking at.

Again Samsung is playing tricks with the pictures, the model has a different pose so your eyes are drawn to different things in each photo so people are not reacting to what is the actually better technical photo, but to what they find pleasing to the eye such as the model's smile. These are all games Samsung is playing to make it look like they have a better camera. Most people are reacting emotionally to the photos not to the quality of the photo.

Samsung is trying to impress people by saying it meets MIL-STD-810G, I know this standard and use to test things and not one other military used it any more. I highly doubt it meet most of the requirements at a product level, maybe some of the component could pass.

I want to see if it actually passed Method 511 Explosive Atmosphere, or Method 519 Gunfire Shock or maybe Method 522 Ballistic Shock.

I doubt their watch are this rugged, there are other ruggized standards out their for electronics other than this Mil Std I wonder why they did not use one of those.

When I read this stuff anymore I only hear Richard Dawson's voice in my head saying "the survey say"

So they surveyed a 100 people and the declared the win is, but Apple never said how many apple TV they sold so they obviously can do the math with out knowing one of the numbers.