Last summer, I took a look at the then-newly-announced combination of what Google and Motorola Mobility would mean for the mobile industry. Today, as the acquisition closed, I’d like to revisit some of the points to see where we go from here.
Google Has Officially Consummated It’s Motorola Mobility Deal Today
At the time the merger was announced, I predicted three things would happen, let’s see how I did.
- Google Flagship Devices Get Better: Did this come true? Yes. Recent weeks have seen Google speak to this directly. Announcing that it would be expanding the Nexus flagship device program is a major step toward this. One of the concerns that many had in the wake of the Goog-Moto announcement was that Google’s hardware partners whose business increasingly relied on putting out Android devices over the past four years would suffer as the new, combined entity would have exclusive access to the latest and greatest Android had to offer. With the recent Nexus expansion announcement, it’s clear that this is not the case. In fact, Google is devoting resources to expanding the number of flagship (read: up-to-date) devices on market grow in number. Google will have to work hard to dislodge the many Android devices in the hands of users that are based on previous versions of the OS, but this is a proper first step.
- The user gets a better experience: Did this come true? Not Yet. the direct result of this push to get more flagship device in the hands of users and, incidentally, of selling them direct to the users and businesses that want them, is to provide a clean, uncluttered Android OS experience. It’s an important thing to do, most anyone who’s used an Apple iOS product knows generally what the OS and experience looks like, not so on the many, many variants of Android currently marketing themselves under the same brand name.
- A Services Ecosystem Will Emerge: Did this come true? No. It’s a bit too soon to call this prediction invalid, however. There are a lot more places we’re expecting to see Android, it’s fluency in connectivity, portability and adaptability due to its open source roots make it the likely candidate to light up any number of devicesthat will make up the Sentient World of tomorrow. For the moment, however, Google needs to get its mobile house in order before the OS can start taking other markets by storm.
Still, with much of the story left to be written – as is expected for a merger announcement that had not yet closed – I’d give a passing grade to the Android team on the progress made to-date. I expect to see the latter two predictions come true in short order as more and more capable devices find their way into users’ hands. I think that, while statistically king in mobile, we’ve not seen anything yet from Android as a game-changer.
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