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.

Comments

Their fall makes me sad

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

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

Re: This should have been obvious...

[xenoc_1]

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.

Doomed from the beginning

[Andy Dodd]

"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".

Actually,

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

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:What it Really means

[Not_Wiggins]

I don't know how much IP Lenovo got... Google seems to have kept much of it.