“By now all of the pundits and analysts have weighed in with their ideas of why Google (GOOG) bought Motorola Mobility,” Andrew Seybold writes for Forbes. “Most believe, as I do, that it was about Motorola’s patent portfolio.”
“Google has finally come to realize that in the wireless world patents are needed not only to protect your own Intellectual Property (IP) and to charge royalties to other companies that want to make use of the technology, but more importantly, patents are for bartering with other companies,” Seybold writes. “If you have a technology that infringes on someone else’s patent you can trade licenses and usually gain access to their IP in exchange for some of yours.”
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Seybold writes, “Google was blind-sided during the Nortel patent sale and there is a lot of competition for the InterDigital patents, so I am sure the Motorola deal is perceived by Google as a huge win…I should be looking at Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility as a brilliant move yet I am not… To me the real winners in this deal could be Apple, RIM, Microsoft, and even HP. They all have operating systems, and some of them (Apple, RIM, and HP) also make wireless devices. All of them have watched as Android roared onto the scene and grabbed market share. All of these companies will now get a breathing spell since I believe the number of new Android-based phones will slow to a trickle with the exception of Motorola’s offerings. I believe the Android market share will fall, not continue to rise, and I think this is where Google miscalculated badly.”
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