So today's shock story is that Google is buying Motorola, well the handset division Motorola Mobility, for a whopping $12.5 billion. That's a 60% premium on its closing price on Friday and represents quite an investment. http://www.businessinsider.com/breaking-google-buying-motorola-mobility-for-1...
The interesting bit for me though is where does this leave Google's Android partners like HTC and Samsung? Is it Google's intention to to create a complete phone eco-system like Apple and the iPhone, in that it owns the hardware the operating systems and the mechanism for delivering he apps? I guess it is.
If so where does this leave the other Android makers? Are they going to become second class Android citizens? Will Google be pushing the Motorola brand to the point where it is state of the art as far as Android goes and is inevitably delivering phones and tablets that are technologically superior to the other brands?
It could be that the real winner in all this is Microsoft. It already has Nokia working on its Windows phones and has a good relationship with LG, which might now fancy pushing MS phones more than Android ones. Maybe HTC and Samsung will also think that the Windows platform offers more a fairer playing field than the Android one.
