Swings and misses - Google bought Motorola because Moto was about to turn their patents on other Android OEMs. Google needed a hardware company like they needed a hole in their heads - they bought a dead fish there. Android's 'fragmentation' is ultimately a problem for the person who buys the handset - it's not a problem for Google or the carrier who, quite frankly, do not really need to give a s* whether you're on 2.2, 2.3 or 4.0. Google doesn't sell more or less ads if you're not on the latest OS version and Verizon is perfectly happy to let you upgrade to the latest OS by buying another handset and locking in for two more years. That fragmentation is also something of a strength. If you want to buy an Android phone with a 3.5" screen, you can. You want to buy one with a 5.3" screen, you can. Anything in between, you can. Want a cheap phone? Plenty of them. Lots of choices. To correct the guy who said that Google is restricting Android to just a few manufacturers...it's not true. They can't - they've open-sourced it to some degree. (Although you need to play by certain rules to be allowed access to the app store and their Google services.) It also doesn't make sense for Google to limit manufacturers - Google doesn't make money on anything past selling ads. They'll never make money on hardware, their app store will never make money...they make their money on selling ads. The more people making their phones, the more ads they sell. Their nightmare comes when Samsung forks Android Amazon-style or adopts their own OS and goes off on their own. Apple is already pushing Google off their handsets and with Samsung starting down that path, Google might be up the creek.
Interesting. Option C is a throwout - basically, it's a nice phone and two doorstops. Gun to my head, I would probably go with an 11" Air and the iPhone if for no other reason than 2/3rds of the Windows options are nothing more than Vaporware right now and I don't think $399 is going to happen....throw $150 on top of that and I would guess that is more in the ballpark. But if they did make it happen, it's a pretty compelling package. (Step one, however, is to go to TechNet, download a Windows 7 ISO and downgrade the ultra book's OS....have been using the Windows 8 beta and now consumer preview and just don't think it makes much sense.)
Agreed. I would refuse a Samsung phone if it was offered free of charge. Love their televisions, but their phones stink.
I don't know how you can say Fragmentation is good for Google, it slows down the upgrade process due to all of the tweaks that other manufactors create, that's good for carriers like Verizon, but not for the users that buy these crappy devices and then switch to iphones. As far as Samsung forking the open source android operating system, other Google services are proprietary and any manufacturer looking to fork Android for their devices must load an independent content library onto the device. Samsung is not cabable at doing this at the moment. Google could also just buy Samsung, it probably can.
Fragmentation hurts the customer in terms of their ability to upgrade to the latest OS - then again, I would guess a majority of the people who buy Android phones do so because they're the cheapest smartphone in the store and upgrades mean nothing to them. Fragmentation doesn't hurt Google, (an ad is an ad is an ad), doesn't hurt the carrier and is at best an annoyance to the OEM. As surely as Amazon did with the Fire, Samsung will be shutting Google out of their phones over time - whether they fork Android or whether they use their own open source project is up in the air, but it will happen. These cats just don't need Google - the skins that the OEMs is less about differentiation and more about putting their flag in the ground in terms of controlling eyeballs and ad impressions.
The two largest cable box providers in the US are Cisco and Motorola/Google. This is not an accident Google: Set Top Box King? >> Google TV is a great example of a product that was choked by the set top box monopoly. So what would Google do with its new presence in the living room if this deal goes through<< These guys want to offer XBox tupes of solutions. with WiFI and cable modem. Large HD for home cloud storage Google doesn't give one hoot about fragmentation. If you've seen the growth of mobile phones for the next 5 years it's a moot point. Apple 275%, Microsoft 900%, Android 100%
Google's tears over fragmentation equals Intel's tears for the short-lived 486 chip. With business doubling year over year no one much cares about the feelings of the tweakers.
I don't know if they're crappy, they're just plasticky. The back covers are literally thin plastic sheets that you pry off with your fingernail - saves weight, saves money, doesn't inspire confidence. If you grab a high end HTC or Nokia phone, they're worlds' different in terms of quality. Of course, those two companies are losing their asses and Samsung and Apple are cashing all the checks. My biggest problem with Samsung is their customer service. As a business owner who has to deal with several dozen people and their phones, there's nothing quite like being stuck in the boot loop of WTF when a Samsung phone on the Verizon network requires warranty replacement. Apple and ATT will replace anything at any time for almost any reason. (I ran my personal iPhone 4S through the washing machine...I was honest with Apple and they replaced it.) Blackberry, although we no longer use them, used to replace phones they really were not obligated to. Samsung, however, tries to push you back to the carrier for everything. The carrier, especially Verizon, pushes you back to Samsung. After a half-dozen phone calls, you might be asked to send the phone to a Samsung repair center in Texas. Once the phone goes there, it stays there for two weeks and comes back (at your expense) with a note stating something to the effect of "warranty schmaranty, we're not fixing it." It has happened more times to us than you can count on one hand. It's a shame, really - I have a Samsung TV and love it. I have a Samsung ultra book and like it quite a bit. I even like the Galaxy Note, as ridiculous as a phone shaped like a pop tart is, but if I were someone who just carried one phone over a two-year contract, I would not buy a Samsung. They don't back it.
I think so too. They will take most of RIMMs remaining share. The slowdown on WP7 in the enterprise was the lack of native encryption, which removed them from the list at my company. WP8 is set to come back on. Android is off. It's a security breach waiting to happen. Android, for better or worse, is a pure consumer platform. WP8 will gain some share against Android and RIMM, maybe a tiny bit from Apple. Apple was smart to play nice in the enterprice space with the 4, and sales and execs love iPads. But they might like Win8 tablets too. My challenge with the iPhone is that the screen is too small, even on the 5, and there are no usable "office" apps. Looking at Word documents in track changes mode is what I need to do. If I can do it on a Nokia 920, and I can, it will be far more useful than my iPhone for work. For play, maybe less so.
