Motorola acquisition a huge gamble for Google
Less than six months after taking over as chief executive, Google
co-founder Larry Page has placed the Internet giant’s most audacious
wager yet.
The $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility dwarfs Google’s
previous purchases and thrusts a company that has made its fortune in
Internet search and advertising into an entirely new arena — hardware.
The Illinois-based Motorola Mobility makes mobile phones, tablet
computers and TV set-top boxes — areas where the Silicon Valley-based
Google has no experience other than writing the software to power the
devices.
Integrating an 80-year-old company with 19,000 employees and
manufacturing plants around the world will pose a serious challenge and
technology analysts are divided on whether Google can carry it off.
Whether it does or not, analysts are unanimous in saying that the
bold move by the 38-year-old Page, who replaced Eric Schmidt as Google’s
chief executive in April, has changed the landscape of the booming
mobile industry.
“The repercussions are huge,” Gartner research director Michael
Gartenberg told AFP.
“It shows that it’s so hard to look at this market beyond the short
term because we’ve seen so many twists and changes.
“Palm went from irrelevant to being bought by Hewlett-Packard, Nokia
was on the ropes and suddenly you have a new CEO and a very close
relationship with Microsoft.”
Gartenberg said the Motorola Mobility purchase gives Google the
“opportunity to pursue their pure vision of Android,” the mobile
operating system it currently licenses to handset manufacturers around
the world.
“It shows they understand the importance of vertical integration,
end-to-end hardware and software,” Gartenberg said. “A lesson that
Apple, RIM (Blackberry maker Research In Motion) and HP have already
learned.”
Google has the resources to “shake up everyone else’s business model
if they so choose,” he said. “Google can now undercut everyone if they
choose in terms of premium handset pricing, go to the carriers with a
different set of terms.”
Former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget, editor-in-chief of the
Business Insider website, was among those expressing doubt about the
wisdom of the deal.
He noted that it gives Google a much-needed portfolio of patents to
protect Android from lawsuits but said it will be a “colossal disaster”
unless Google “quickly sells off Motorola’s hardware businesses.”
“Google is a massive global software company with huge profit
margins, genius engineers, extraordinarily high pay scales and a
near-monopoly on the most amazing advertising business the world has
ever seen,” Blodget wrote. “Motorola is a has-been, low-margin, global
hardware-manufacturing business that operates at break-even.” afp
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