Why the Google-Moto deal may not result in better phones

[ http://articles.cnn.com/2011-08-15/tech/google.motorola.phones_1_google-s-android-android-os-windows-mobile-platform?_s=PM:TECH ]

August 17 2011

Other mobile-phone manufacturers -- already pretty scared of Google's moves into the smartphone-making biz -- could actually use this deal as a reason to move away from Android and to the Windows Mobile platform, writes Ina Fried at the All Things Digital blog....

"Look, I'm aware that Google says Motorola's Droid division will be a wholly-owned and independent subsidiary while the giant search engine company continues to bestow its patent litigation-peppered 'free and open' OS upon a willing and supplicant world, but I don't believe that promise will hold true forever. It makes no sense," he [Jonny Evans] writes.

[PJ: You know what I think [ http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050119041239356 ] about analysts, but it still amazes me how they consistently fail to get the most vital pieces of a story right. In addition to all the flaws I mentioned in that 2005 article, I'll add one more: analysts analyze based on what has happened in the past. Google isn't about the past, so they don't understand one bit of what Google is doing. And all the fault-finding is amazing to me.

This mobile patent fight is about whether or not it will be possible to have any kind of open choice or whether we will be forced into proprietary handsets with proprietary software. That means we all have a dog in this fight. There's also money in winning that battle, or no one would be paying out big bucks for patents. That's the payoff, not the hardware per se, and the patents will pay for themselves in litigation not brought and litigation won and market share without anxiety and freedom to innovate. That's not even talking about TV set boxes and a Java license.

And vendors will still prefer Android because customers prefer Android, and no matter what happens, they would be silly to pay money for Microsoft stuff, when no one wants Microsoft's stuff. Plus consider what the market includes -- huge areas of the world where cheap means a sale. Vendors would have to pay Microsoft to get their stuff, and then there goes that important market. Plus Microsoft is in bed with Nokia already, so what would be the gain?] - John D. Sutter, CNN

01:14 PM EDT