Lenovo: Motorola Acquisition 'Did Not Meet Expectations' (theverge.com) 62
Lenovo acquired Motorola from Google in 2014. Since then, the Chinese technology conglomerate has been trying to merge Motorola's offering into its large portfolio. But things aren't going as planned. Lenovo on Thursday announced that the "integration efforts did not meet expectations". The company, however, insists that it has drawn many lessons from the experience since the close of the Motorola acquisition, and it is making changes to them quickly.
It's not the best time in the market if you're an Android smartphone maker. There's an increasingly growing competition especially from companies such as Xiaomi, Meizu, Micromax, Yu and others that are making premium smartphones with a razor-thin margin. Any unique feature a smartphone maker introduces is seen replicated in others' offerings within weeks.
It's not the best time in the market if you're an Android smartphone maker. There's an increasingly growing competition especially from companies such as Xiaomi, Meizu, Micromax, Yu and others that are making premium smartphones with a razor-thin margin. Any unique feature a smartphone maker introduces is seen replicated in others' offerings within weeks.
What it Really means (Score:5, Insightful)
We've completed sucking all the IP out of Motorola and are ready to ditch it by one means or another.
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Ah yes, Merger and Acquisitions. Seems to work out well for the Wall Street types. For everybody else, not so much.
Re:What it Really means (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah yes, Merger and Acquisitions. Seems to work out well for the Wall Street types. For everybody else, not so much.
Indeed. Roughly 80% of M&A's fail, and lose value for shareholders. But every CEO is sure his deal will be one of the 20%.
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Indeed. Roughly 80% of M&A's fail, and lose value for shareholders. But every CEO is sure his deal will be one of the 20%.
Depends on what the long term effect is, which I don't think you can conclusively say is a loss. Many buy-outs are to pay off a potential challenger before they become a real threat or to pick up a failing company's assets so it doesn't fall into the wrong hands or to round out a portfolio so you can be a "full service" partner. Very often there's an element of insurance and short term you'll pay the "insurance premium" as the bought assets are devalued back to their actual value or even put in the drawer.
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Indeed. Roughly 80% of M&A's fail, and lose value for shareholders. But every CEO is sure his deal will be one of the 20%.
Depends on what the long term effect is, which I don't think you can conclusively say is a loss. Many buy-outs are to pay off a potential challenger before they become a real threat or to pick up a failing company's assets so it doesn't fall into the wrong hands or to round out a portfolio so you can be a "full service" partner. Very often there's an element of insurance and short term you'll pay the "insurance premium" as the bought assets are devalued back to their actual value or even put in the drawer. I think those are a relatively large part of the volume where you don't expect the bought assets by themselves to be much of a money maker. And then there's the big, spectacular failures...
Wait, you forgot to add that a number of them are simply due to the CEO's ego, rather than any value.
I know of at least one company that bought a competitor simply because the CEO saw it as a trophy. The other company was going bankrupt, had investors suing it, etc. If the CEO had waited, he could have picked up the leftovers for a song. Instead, the merger almost killed the buying company, triggered multiple rounds of layoffs of employees, and set it back at least 5 years. But hey, the CEO got his tro
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Actually, Google kept all of Motorola's patents and IP. They just sold the phone "manufacturing" business and label to Lenovo.
Lenovo got nothing useful out of the deal besides the Motorola name. It was a stupid deal, and they deserve to suffer for it.
Re:What it Really means (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know how much IP Lenovo got... Google seems to have kept much of it. [techcrunch.com]
This should have been obvious... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: This should have been obvious... (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty much every single smartphone is made in China. Regardless of brand, major or minor, "Western" (Apple, Microsoft/Nokia, rump-Nokia, Alcatel, or low-ends like Blu, etc.), "Developed World Asian"(Samsung, LG, HTC, etc.), or Chinese (Huawei, Oppo, OnePlus, etc.) as the "manufacturer".
Many by the same contract manufacturers in China. And no, that "Designed by Apple in California" or "Google Nexus" branding and supposed oversight does not guarantee that spying firmware and hardware can't get into some subset of phones.
It's pathetically hilarious when legislators or "patriotic citizen" low information types rant about evil Chinese companies making the products and demand only 'Murrican brands.
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Pretty much every single smartphone is made in China. Regardless of brand, major or minor, "Western" (Apple, Microsoft/Nokia, rump-Nokia, Alcatel, or low-ends like Blu, etc.), "Developed World Asian"(Samsung, LG, HTC, etc.), or Chinese (Huawei, Oppo, OnePlus, etc.) as the "manufacturer".
How many of these companies have a reputation for inserting backdoors into their devices? Google moved away from Lenovo laptops because they found backdoors in the BIOS that linked back to China.
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they found backdoors in the BIOS that linked back to China.
Citation? There have been:
-Superfish - an ill-advised US-sourced adware using a horribly insecure Isreali TLS proxy implementation
-'ShareIT' - a stupid wireless sharing thing that used a stupid password
-Lenovo updater - the utility that offers up a payload for Windows to use in a manner that Windows supports. Intended to be a software update utility, particularly problematic in that it would use http without TLS to download updates. Ill-advised in that it does *anything* to a clean retail copy (but MS ge
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There have been no backdoors, albeit a lot of stupid security decisions that put Lenovo users at risk from people.
Right...
Lenovo is one of the world's largest PC brands, but it is also a Chinese PC brand. With the US and other Western countries increasingly looking at China's cyber warfare division as the next great threat, that was bound to create some issues. However, recent news revealing that spy agencies in the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have prohibitions against using the company's products seem to be based on more than general suspicion.
Apparently, the ban stems from concerns that Lenovo, which is partially owned by the Chinese government's Academy of Sciences, has built "malicious circuits" into their machines. Testing allegedly proved the existence of backdoor functionality built into Lenovo-brand circuit boards, along with other vulnerabilities built into the firmware.
http://www.geek.com/chips/spy-agencies-shun-lenovo-finding-backdoors-built-into-the-hardware-1563801/ [geek.com]
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" Australia Department of Defence available on their web site that says “This reporting is factually incorrect. There is no Department of Defence ban on the Lenovo Company or their products; either for classified or unclassified systems.”"
Also, 'apparently' and 'allegedly'. No agency has actually come out and said anything. This means that either they *did* find something and they are keeping it secret, counter to their mission of safeguarding the security of their citizens, or they *didn't* f
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I'll add a third option, they found 'something' but feared that 'something' wouldn't stand up to scrutiny and/or would require investigation, which isn't worth the cost given there's other suppliers at the exact same price, so they just denied approval and someone involved directly or indirectly wanted to highlight their fear to the wider public.
For example, I have heard that some will test by taking a laptop at factory preload (even though it won't actually *run* the factory preload in practice), run wires
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It's pathetically hilarious when legislators or "patriotic citizen" low information types rant about evil Chinese companies making the products and demand only 'Murrican brands.
Ah yes, buy 'Murcan! I recall a wonderful story about the city that needed to buy a bunch of tractors or some such. They had a choice between Toyota and John Deere. They went with the 'Murcan brand, John Deere. And then later found out that the Toyota tractors were completely built and assembled in 'Murca while the John Deere ones were imported from Korea.
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Buying a phone that only phones home to China sounds more attractive, especially since they only want to steal my secrets, but won't SPAM me and resell my data to everyone who pays.
You trust the Chinese government more than the American government?! Traitor!
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Buying a phone that only phones home to China sounds more attractive, especially since they only want to steal my secrets, but won't SPAM me and resell my data to everyone who pays.
You trust the Chinese government more than the American government?! Traitor!
I'd trust pretty much any government more than the 5 eyes data whores.
Sad to see this happen to Moto (Score:5, Interesting)
My first "new-age" smartphone (discounting those horrid old 3G Windows Mobile phones with a stylus in the mid-2000s) was a Motorola Droid 2. For a number of years, Motorola was well-known and respected among smartphone users for:
- Shipping fairly high-end kit, though perhaps not always the latest and greatest
- Very good power efficiency (for Android)
- A lack of the excessive amount of crapware you get on most phones; only the bare minimum the carrier forces on you
- A close-to-vanilla Android experience
- Great build quality and premium feel
- Reasonable prices - they were never the most expensive in the marketplace
- Generous battery capacity -- which, when combined with the power efficiency of their tuned SoCs, led to awesome battery life without any external batteries or extended batteries
- One of the less-hyped smartphone manufacturers (compared to Apple and Samsung) that still churned out well-engineered products and listened to their customers
Unfortunately these virtues seem to have fallen by the wayside to an extent, and the dominance of Samsung, (LG?), and Apple has pushed them out of the market it seems.
The only effect Lenovo could possibly have on them is to force them to cheapen their build. Everything Lenovo touches turns to cheap plastic.
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- A lack of the excessive amount of crapware you get on most phones; only the bare minimum the carrier forces on you
That must be what confused Lenovo - they probably wanted to install Superfish on the things.
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Unfortunately these virtues seem to have fallen by the wayside to an extent, and the dominance of Samsung, (LG?), and Apple has pushed them out of the market it seems.
Those virtues reduce profit and/or increase costs, which both executive managers and customers hate.
Actually, (Score:4, Informative)
I recently purchased a MotoX Pure Edition and MotoG Third generation and most of the is is still true. The MotoE is reported to be a pretty good entry-level android phone.
- Shipping fairly high-end kit, though perhaps not always the latest and greatest
- Very good power efficiency (for Android)
- A lack of the excessive amount of crapware you get on most phones; only the bare minimum the carrier forces on you
- A close-to-vanilla Android experience
- Great build quality and premium feel
- Reasonable prices - they were never the most expensive in the marketplace
- Generous battery capacity -- which, when combined with the power efficiency of their tuned SoCs, led to awesome battery life without any external batteries or extended batteries
Hopefully Lenovo doesn't go the route they did with the Thinkpad line and totally ruin the quality.
Re: Actually, (Score:2)
Moto X Play (Canada) here and I really like this phone.
The huge battery was the biggest draw. Since updating toto Android Marshmallow I get over two days batter with regular use.
Very few apps pre-installed. All of them were Motorola branded, nothing third party.
I was also able to obtain a carrier/network unlock code online for only $4, where Apple and Samsung devices are in the $60+ range.
Fairly sturdy phone. Paid $400 CAD for it. No contract/financing through my carrier.
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My Moto G 2nd meets all of those criteria. It's a non-partnered phone I bought through Amazon. It had no crapware, just some Motorola apps like migrate, most of which could be removed. The battery capacity is pretty good since it has an old GPU, which is fine for my purposes. The build quality is excellent and I've dropped it several times without harm. It cost $200 brand new when it had just come out. The software support has so far been very good. What's not to like?
Their fall makes me sad (Score:4, Informative)
I have some friends who work at Motorola. My cousin's hubby is an engineer there. He's worked his ass off on phones, back and forth to factories in china all the time. All for naught.
An interesting read: Lenovo/Motorola repeating the mistakes of HP/Palm [theverge.com]
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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How about... (Score:3)
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And the answer is Nexus 6P.
It has everything you just said.
The stock android experience is gorgeous.
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And the answer is Nexus 6P.
It has everything you just said.
The stock android experience is gorgeous.
Well add Dual SIM, micro SD slot and enough frequencies to work around the world and that would be my phone. As it is I have a travel phone and a home phone.
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Oh wait, that hasn't been true of the Nexus line since Nexus One.
So Motorola!
So.... the answer is Sony now i guess?
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I'm sorry but you are a smaller audience. As more and more people use their phone for all their web browsing and emails, a bigger screen becomes needed.
It is extremely rare that I ever utilize my laptop unless I am working on my server or doing some complex type that most users will never do on a smart phone or a computer. Gaming is really one of the few reasons to have a full blown computer.
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And
(5) Isn't chock-full of functionality bugs and compatibility/interoperability problems (in Bluetooth, NFC, WiFi / WiFi Direct, wireless display (Miracast or WiDi or...)
(6) Adopts a "make it work well or don't ship it" policy - a lot of the gimmicky features in recent smartphones don't work all that well, and are really buggy or highly dependent upon individual users' use case (or biology, or...) meeting some limited design expectations. The best smartphones simply exclude gimmicks that aren't properly re
Big-endian Vs Little-endian (Score:2)
Mighty! (Score:2)
Whose expectations? (Score:4, Interesting)
My default expectation in any high profile acquisition is that the target company's stockholders will do well, the CEO of the acquiring company will make a bundle, and the stockholders of the acquiring company will take a bath.
Can we please have the Razr-resurrection first... (Score:2)
Doomed from the beginning (Score:4, Informative)
"One aspect of its refreshed strategy is to have two co-presidents, with two distinct strategies for China and the rest of the world."
This should have been the strategy from the beginning. The Chinese domestic market and the global market are vastly different. Cheap unmaintained crap with a glossy UI painted over a broken core does great in China, but Westerners hate it.
Similarly, the "clean" UI preferred by Westerners is hated in Asian countries, especially China.
Moto declined because its customers began seeing evidences of "Chinaficiation" - Lenovo fired Motorola's applications team who knew how to make "value add" additions to Android without falling into the "Touchwiz Trap", and then continued with a rapid-fire string of early EOLs from a manufacturer whose recent successes in the West entirely were due to a reputation of "affordable but not crap with rapid updates".
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+1
First thing they do out of the gate is orphan a bunch of very new phones for updates. All the great press Moto had worked years to gain evaporated overnight. Why would you buy a Moto phone when you could just buy a Nexus?
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Asians like messy UIs? Ick.