Motorola's Identity Crisis
Posted by News Fetcher on August 22 '11 at 07:00 AM
By Soulskill from
Slashdot's coulda-just-bought-a-ferrari department:
An anonymous reader writes
"An article at the NY Times discusses the awkwardness of Google's recent purchase of Motorola Mobility, an acquisition widely thought to be motivated by Android patent concerns rather than a more straightforward business plan. From the article: 'While industry analysts and insiders say the rationale makes sense, they also say it leaves Motorola in an unusual position. ... Heightening the uncertainty is that the companies involved, both of which declined to comment, are in some ways as different as two technology companies can be. Google makes Internet services and software, thrives on high profit margins and distributes its product using giant data centers. Motorola makes hardware, has modest margins on a good day and moves its products on trucks and airplanes and through brick-and-mortar stores. ... "It's like, thanks for everything you did in the 20th century, but you're being bought by a search engine," said Roger Entner, a telecommunications industry analyst and founder of Recon Analytics, a market research firm. He added, "Nobody ever buys a company and leaves it alone."'"Read Replies (0)
By Soulskill from
Slashdot's opinions-are-like-music-services department:
jfruhlinger writes with news that Research In Motion will soon
jump into the music service market. The service will be available through BlackBerry Messenger, and will offer users 50 songs for $5/month, which they can then share with other people who own BlackBerries.
"So why would anyone pay $5 a month to get 50 songs on their phone, when they can pay $10 a month and get an unlimited number of songs, that work on lots of different devices, from services like Rdio and Rhapsody? Reasonable question! But RIM seems to be assuming that its subscribers won’t ask. Instead it is playing up the notion that BBM Music will be about 'personalizing' your phone, in the same way that ringtones supposedly did a decade ago. Ringtones, as you’ll recall, let buyers play a few seconds of a song, and sold for a couple bucks, while full songs from Apple’s iTunes went for 99 cents. And for a few years, the music companies and the wireless carriers sold lots and lots of ringtones."Read Replies (0)