The first smartphone from Google and Motorola will be extremely durable, fast, and have a massive battery life, according to Google CEO Larry Page
Google CEO Larry Page dropped a couple of hints during his company’s Q4 earnings call about what we can expect from the first smartphone co-developed by Google and Motorola.
He also reiterated his company’s commitment to ensuring it manages its supply chain better in order to avoid another Nexus 4 fiasco.
On the subject of Motorola, Page said it’s working on two things: better battery life and impact-resistant designs.
Google, as many of you will remember, bought Motorola last year for the princely sum of $12 billion. This deal gave the search giant complete ownership of the Motorola’s extensive war chest of standard essential patents, which it put to use in its on-going patent feud with Apple and its many hardware partners.
No one expected Google and Motorola to collaborate on a smartphone, however. The implications and potential affects on Google’s long-serving hardware partners (HTC, Samsung, LG, and Huawei) would be huge, for obvious reasons.
But it seems Google is keen to co-develop hardware with the new-streamlined Motorola. Speaking about Motorola’s newly appointed CEO, Dennis Woodside, Page said:
‘Our CEO at Motorola, Dennis, has built a world-class team, and they’re working on these opportunities. It’s still early days, but I am excited about the innovative way they’re approaching product development and the speed of their execution. And they recently signed an agreement to sell Motorola’s Home division for $2.35 billion.’
Google has always maintained that it’d keep the Motorola brand in place and run it as its own business, meaning any handset produced by the two companies, despite the fact they’re now a single business entity, would carry the Motorola name.
Is this what the Motorola X phone will be? A Motorola-branded Google/Motorola-built handset? Perhaps.
And, that way – at least in theory – Google could appease its other Android hardware partners by giving them rights to its Nexus line of devices.
Either way, Google is now very much a hardware manufacturer. And it’ll be interesting to see if it keeps its cutthroat Nexus-pricing in place for its Motorola-branded handsets as well.
The plot has well and truly thickened…
by via Know Your Mobile
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