“Dennis Woodside took over Motorola when the search giant bought the company, and left after it was sold on to Lenovo to join Dropbox, Silicon Valley’s hottest cloud company,” Matt Warman reports for The Telegraph. “Used by more than 300m people around the world, it has become as vital as Google to both businesses and consumers.”
“It was at Motorola where Woodside developed a reputation for unusual frankness, attacking companies who charged high prices for mobile phones to preserve profit margins: ‘There’s a handful of players and it’s not to their advantage to see prices fall,’ he said,” Warman reports. “Indeed, the 6-inch Nexus 6, he can now admit, was stymied by just one of those big players. A dimple on the back that helps users hold the device should, in fact, have been rather more sophisticated. ‘The secret behind that is that it was supposed to be fingerprint recognition, and Apple bought the best supplier. So the second best supplier was the only one available to everyone else in the industry and they weren’t there yet,’ says Woodside.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Struggling Samsung to copy Apple’s Touch ID with new static fingerprint sensor in Galaxy S6 – January 17, 2015
Samsung’s plastic, 32-bit Galaxy S5 has serious fingerprint sensor problems – May 6, 2014
Samsung’s Galaxy S5 fingerprint scanner hacked, PayPal accounts at risk – April 15, 2014
Apple’s iPhone 5s Touch ID vs. Samsung’s Galaxy S5 fingerprint scanner (with video) – April 4, 2014
Ars Technica: Apple’s Touch ID and 64-bit A7 are deceptively large advances in the iPhone’s evolution – September 24, 2013
Security researcher: Apple iPhone 5s Touch ID is truly better security – September 19, 2013
iPhone 5s Touch ID iPhone fingerprint scanner earns praise – September 19, 2013
Apple’s Touch ID is revolutionary, paradigm-altering technology; Steve Jobs would be quite proud – September 17, 2013
iPhone 5s: Once again Apple leaps ahead with Touch ID fingerprint recognition; a big enterprise win for Apple – September 10, 2013
Apple reveals flagship iPhone 5s with Touch ID, the world’s first and only 64-bit smartphone – September 10, 2013
“Apple bought the best supplier.” End of article’s discussion of Apple. Rest is a verbose Dropbox promo. Nice headline, MDN.
Motorola was happy to ship a phone with a crappy user experience, Apple wasn’t.
Gotta love it…”Yeah, we were planning on doing that, but something (blah, blah, blah excuse) stopped us. The implication is, of course, that Company X is so close to being Apple that you can barely tell the difference. I beg to differ.
Apple did it with Touch ID and a lot of other technologies and devices. So quit whining about some other company eating your cheese. Do or do not. There is no try.
That must be a relief for Android users, Google would probably upload their users fingerprints to their cloud and supply them to the FBI on request.
(see today’s news for context http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/25/wikileaks-google-staff-emails-us-government )
I read the linked article. The irony. Wiki leaks uses Gmail then is upset they weren’t told about a secret search warrant so they could ‘protect their privacy’. I am still laughing.
“It was at Motorola where Woodside developed a reputation for unusual frankness, attacking companies who charged high prices for mobile phones to preserve profit margins:”
How dare these companies that make good products get compensated for their efforts, avoid becoming bargain bin items and close down. /sarcasm Dennis’s strategy of running companies to ground and then sell them to the Chinese for cents on the dollar is clearly the way to go.
Well actually I’m scared now. Sounds like Dropbox may be next.
Yes, much better to sell products at almost the iPhone’s price but lose money as Motorola does.
Well, that Motorola MC55 that ran Windows Mobile 6 and sold for $3500 and gave Microsoft a $1200 license does seem to fit in the “overpriced” bucket.
(Yeah, I know, not Motorola Mobility. Just seemed funny)
Is the back of a phone the best place for a fingerprint scanner, regardless of the technology behind it? I keep my iPhone next to my computer and find a front mounted scanner very convenient. It doesn’t limit my choice of cases or docks and is hard to ignore as it’s also the home button.
I can see not wanting to be accused of copying Apple, but is it worth the ergonomic and practical inconveniences?
In the meantime, do I want Google to possibly have access to my fingerprint data? :Shudder:
People who buy Android don’t know or realize how well something works. They just watch slick advertisements, see bullet points, and say “that one is $25 less. And if I get two I get . . .”
People who buy Android are part of the “good enough” crowd (and that crowd is huge).
* The screen isn’t as responsive as the iPhone, but it’s good enough.
* The phone never gets updated like the iPhone, but it’s good enough.
* The apps may not be as abundant and the ones that are there are generally shitty copies/ports of iOS ones, but Facebook is good enough.
I remember when Touch ID sensor was introduced and most of the smartphone industry said Apple’s Touch ID Sensor was useless crap and simply a copy of the old Motorola Atrix smartphone fingerprint reader. I have never heard any analyst say the iPhone Touch ID Sensor has any advantage over any Android smartphone. Certainly no one of importance ever said anything about the Authentec purchase being a big win for Apple. This is just one man’s opinion and he’s blowing it way out of proportion.
Besides Samsung was supposed to introduce some eyeball reading system that was claimed to be many times better and more secure than Apple’s Touch ID Sensor fingerprint reader.
What? Surely the Nexus 6 can read my middle finger from all the way over here. 😛
Now I’m inspired to consider dumping DropBox.
Since I’ve been using Airdrop my use of Dropbox has gone way down.
Sure, yet services like Dropbox really differ from Airdrop.
Dropbox doesn’t require to be on a local WIFI or in range of the other persons computer/device.
APPLE: AirDrop files between your devices —
In OS X Yosemite, AirDrop helps you quickly transfer files between your Mac and nearby Mac computers or iOS devices using Wi-Fi. You don’t have to be connected to the same network in order to transfer files – your devices automatically set up a direct wireless connection for AirDrop.
MinBox, Minus, iCloud – there are plenty to chose from if you don’t like DropBox. However, yeah, I deleted DropBox long ago.
Hard to believe the same guy who sat behind Motorola when it was suing Apple over a standard essential patent and demanding 2.25% of each iPhone sold is now waxing lyrical about high prices of mobile phones.
Does Google run an Hypocrisy University for their top ranks or something?
I just played around with a Nexus 6 at work that our mobile developers had. Googles flagship android phone and os version lags. Lags opening apps and almost everything else.