Motorola is disappointing its parent company in many ways — CFO and senior VP Patrick Pichette said so himself.
Like HTC with its One and Huawei's Ascend, Motorola has plans to adapt itself to the marketplace, long dominated by Samsung and Apple, both companies with a very popular flagship handset that defines them in the eyes of potential consumers. For Motorola, it'll be the X Phone.
When Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion in 2011, signifying its shift from OS and search engine provider to an active gadget seller, experts were afraid the company would give Motorola a massive lead. Google had originally planned to be able to selectively favor carriers, allowing none of them to rocket to prominence as Samsung has, but LG, HTC and Motorola simultaneously busted, allowing Samsung to claim the biggest slice of the Android pie while they recovered.
Motorola's thick patent folder and supply line was one of several reasons Google acquired the company — another was to mitigate the threat that Samsung posed, by working on its own hardware provider. Since then, Motorola has been bleeding creative talent, BGR reports. Disrespected and unloved by Google, the most talented programmers and designers would probably rather work for established giants, such as Samsung, or emerging powers — such as Huawei.
To add insult to injury, Google has now brought on Guy Kawasaki, who masterminded Apple's massively successful computer marketing campaigns in the '80s. BGR speculates that Kawasaki has been tapped to spearhead the ad campaign behind the X Phone, but before that even begins, the company needs to secure the ability to produce its flagship.
Samsung and Apple not only dominate the market, they're eating into component suppliers, probably even cannibalizing each other when it comes to the iPhone 5S and Galaxy S4. Nokia, LG and BlackBerry are already struggling to produce phones at a decent volume for their flagships; whether or not Motorola can jostle its way into place, is up to how well the company manages its supply lines.
If it succeeds there, at least it won't have to worry about marketing.
(Edited by Lois Heyman)
