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Lenovo: Motorola Acquisition 'Did Not Meet Expectations' (theverge.com)
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.
If margins were so low, prices would make some kind of sense.
No one wants a cellphone that phone homes to China.
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.
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
Lenovo spokesperson: This certainly didnt meet our expectations...we should learn and grow from the experience.
Microsoft spokesperson: The Windows phone is, and will always be, a perfect success. our acquisition from Nokia was, and always will be, a good decision. less than 1% market share is precisely the finest definition of this success. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to shovel a few more coal-like employees into the furnace of unemployment, that our steam engine of failure might surge ever mightier into oblivion in its quest for bankruptcy.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I think a lot of Android users would like a phone that (1) gets security updates in a timely way, (2) has reasonably current features, (3) is generally trustworthy, and and (4) isn't force-loaded with lots of uninstallable crapware. Android is a nice OS, but a lot of the smartphone manufacturers seem to assume that users don't care about these things.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
We've completed sucking all the IP out of Motorola and are ready to ditch it by one means or another.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Vanilla Android (so upgradeable), microSD slot, easily swappable battery, good build quality, rootable, no network provider crapware and good build quality (doesn't have to be hipster shiny, but doesn't hurt if it is as long as it doesn't omit other features.)
No phone maker is willing to do this in the USA with high-end CPU, so creating one like that would truly make it stand-out!
Happens every time
The price they charge at your local friendly phone store is sometimes 10+ times the price of the off-factory pricing
I am not kidding
After deducting the cost of the BOM (bill of material) and the assembling charge (often ~ $5 per) some of the second tier android makers are actually losing money on the phones they sell
It's the middle people - the wholesalers, the warehouser, the logistic companies, the insurance companies, ... all the way down to your local friendly phone stores - that mark up the price tag
It is about time the Chinese bought a puppy.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
... that was recently announced, before they close the shop? I hate those oversized bar-phones, and it's a tragedy there are no small folder phones anymore (that also provide up-to-date technology).
idiot lenovo. Motorla is a big name in USA like Nokia in Europe. Snap the Moto stickers on you lenovo phones and done. Jeebus lenovo, don't be stupid...
"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".
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
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.
It sounds like you are describing a Samsung Note 4 running Cyanogenmod
There is a reason for Google to basically give the OS away for free. There is absolutely no possible way for a mobile phone maker to differentiate themselves from each other with an OS like Android and therefore provide reason to consumers to buy their products. As long as the user already has a phone in their pocket able to the latest OS and their apps, all phones are basically the same. Google knows there is money for them simply by making sure everyone is using the platform and buying apps and content from them. In addition, Google can charge their customers for advertising which is their core business.
Look at the fall of Ericson, Nokia, etc with regards to Symbian. The fact is, the phone itself can't cut a profit. It's simply a platform to deliver content and advertising on.
I have seen a lot of QHD+ phones advertised which suggests that phone makers have run out of meaningful changes they can make. They can't get bigger and higher resolution is meaningless. The phones have more CPU cores and GPU cores than are relevant any longer. RAM is plentiful. Storage is plentiful. Reception is fixed by the provider, not the phone maker. Bandwidth is great. Touch is flawless. Sound is amazing. There are a dozen more sensors than are even logical.
The fact is, even Apple, the absolute marketing gods are completely out of ideas. They have nothing left to offer that can't be done in software so their hellbent on profiting on accessories like watches instead. All new features are probably through software and if they make any sense Apple and Google will cut out the middle man if there is profit to be made.
It took 1/10th the time with cell phones to reach the point that slower and smaller is sometime better than with PCs.
If I hadn't bought a new iPhone 6s following a breakage of my iPhone 5s, I'd have bought the iPhone Plus instead ... But it wasn't out yet. Unless Apple has something truly mind blowing to offer (not likely... That died with Jobs), my next phone will be purchased when thi ls one dies
Lenovo is a piece of shit company with idiot engineers. Don't ever buy Lenovo. -MrTweetyhack