Google’s Big Bet on the Mobile FutureBy EVELYN M. RUSLI, New York Times, AUGUST 15, 2011, 9:47 PM

Tim Boyle/Bloomberg NewsSanjay Jha, the chief executive of Motorola Mobility, who has been responsible for turning around the company, will remain as the division’s top executive.

Google made a $12.5 billion bet on Monday that its future — and the future of big Internet companies — lies in mobile computing, and moved aggressively to take on its arch rival Apple in the mobile market.

The Silicon Valley giant, known for its search engine and Android phone software, rattled the tech world with its announcement that it would acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings, allowing it to get into the business of making cellphones and tablets.

The acquisition, Google’s largest to date and an all-cash deal, would put the company in head-to-head competition with its own business partners, the many phone makers that use Android software, as well as with Apple.

The deal, which requires regulatory approval, would also give Google a valuable war chest of more than 17,000 patents that would help it defend Android from a barrage of patent lawsuits.

“Computing is moving onto mobile,” Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, said in an interview. “Even if I have a computer next to me, I’ll still be on my mobile device.”

The effect of a Google-Motorola Mobility merger on consumers is unclear. But in the past, Google has shaken up the mobile industry by pushing cellphone carriers to open up their networks, and by licensing its Android system at no charge, increasing competition. With the Motorola deal, analysts said, Google may be able to accelerate innovation in smartphones and tablets.

“For Google, it’s important for them to make sure that the mobile space is not dominated by one company, that being Apple,” said Steve Weinstein, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities. By acquiring Motorola, he said, they “can drive down costs and create a product that is pioneering with Google services around it.”

The proposed deal would have ramifications across the tech industry, giving strength to Motorola at a time when Research in Motion and Nokia are faltering.

Google said it would continue to license its Android system to other smartphone makers, like HTC, Samsung and LG. “Many hardware partners have contributed to Android’s success, and we look forward to continuing to work with all of them,” wrote Mr. Page in a company blog post announcing the deal.

Nonetheless, while many of Google’s partners issued positive statements on Monday, analysts suggested that the acquisition would create tension because Motorola would be in an obviously favored position. That could push other phone makers into the arms of Microsoft, which offers a rival operating system.

“If you woke up today and you are one of Google’s hardware partners, the hair just set up on the back of your neck,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Partners. “If you’re an Android partner, you may start considering the Windows platform.”

Mr. Page addressed those concerns by saying that Motorola would effectively operate as a stand-alone business. Sanjay Jha, the chief executive of Motorola Mobility, who has been responsible for turning the company around, will remain as the unit’s top executive.

Federal regulators are already investigating Google’s dominance in several areas of its business, and the planned merger will prompt additional antitrust review. But legal experts said it seemed unlikely that the deal would be blocked because the two companies are in separate, if related, businesses so a combination would not increase Google’s share of either market.

Phones running the Android system have become increasingly popular, accounting for 43.4 percent of smartphones sold in the second quarter, according to Gartner research. But many customers have complained that the phones can be confusing to use.

That is because Google works with 39 phone makers that use different versions of Android across their platforms, resulting in variable performances, said Richard Doherty, research director for Envisioneering Group, a market research and consulting firm.

Tim Boyle/Bloomberg NewsSanjay Jha, the chief executive of Motorola Mobility, who has been responsible for turning around the company, will remain as the division’s top executive.

Apple, by contrast, controls its entire product — device and software. With the Motorola acquisition, Google, too, could exert greater control over its products.

But it is far from clear that Google, a $179 billion business largely built on sophisticated search algorithms and online advertising, can transform itself into a device maker. The business is costly, and the margins are slim, said Jordan Rohan, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus.

“If you have the best-selling phone, you can make a lot of money,” he said. “What’s not clear to me is whether phones that sell a few million units make a lot of money.”

The chief of Android, Andy Rubin, even proclaimed, in 2009, that the company was simply “not making hardware.”

By becoming a phone maker, Google may be able to increase its clout with wireless carriers, which control pricing and distribution of cellphones.

“This is an opportunity for Google to jumpstart the market, in pricing and innovation,” said Avi Seidmann, an information systems professor at the University of Rochester.

Google’s deal for Motorola comes just weeks after it lost a bid to a consortium led by Apple and Microsoft for 6,000 patents from Nortel, a Canadian communications company that filed for bankruptcy in 2009. For Google, which faces an increasing number of patent infringement claims against its Android system, the loss was a major blow.

David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, later accused the winning bidders of engaging in anticompetitive behavior, describing the deal as “a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.” Patent fights are common in the technology industry and come with high stakes. Companies are often required to pay licensing fees to continue using technology after losing infringement claims and are sometimes blocked from selling their products.

But while Mr. Drummond was complaining, he and other executives were working on the Motorola deal.“The best way to fight a big portfolio of patents is to have your own big portfolio of patents,” said Herbert

Hovenkamp, a law professor at the University of Iowa. “That appears to be what Google is doing here, arming itself with patents to be able to defend itself in this fast-growing market.”

Google’s bid for Motorola is an extension of what Eric E. Schmidt, the company’s former chief executive, said last year was a “mobile first” strategy. Following that approach, Google has expended millions of dollars and considerable engineering power into developing a broad array of mobile-centric services. But the bid for Motorola is its strongest move in that area.

“This is an emphatic exclamation point that Google is a mobile company,” said Ben Schachter, an analyst with Macquarie Capital. “It shows how important Android is to Google.”

Under the terms of the deal, which is expected to close by early 2012, Google will pay Motorola Mobility’s shareholders $40 a share, a 63 percent premium to Friday’s closing price. Although Motorola had casual talks with prospective suitors earlier this year, the sale of the Nortel patents at a $4.5 billion price tag encouraged Motorola’s directors to pursue a sale more actively, according to people briefed on the matter. Last week Google, led by Mr. Page, emerged as the frontrunner, and by Sunday, Motorola’s board gave the green light.

Shares of Google fell 1.16 percent on Monday, to $557.23, while shares of Motorola Mobility added 55.78 percent, to $38.12.

Shares of Nokia and Research in Motion surged, too, amid speculation that they are takeover targets as well. Nokia, which recently entered a comprehensive partnership with Microsoft, led the gains, with shares rising more than 17 percent.

Steve Lohr, Verne G. Kopytoff and Michael J. de la Merced contributed reporting.

Behind Google’s Huge Breakup Fee in Motorola DealBy STEVEN M. DAVIDOFF, New York Times, AUGUST 18, 2011, 4:07 PM

It is certainly big. But is there any chance that it will be paid? I’m talking about the $2.5 billion reverse termination fee that Google agreed to pay Motorola Mobility if its proposed takeover fails to obtain antitrust clearance. This fee is about 20 percent of the $12.5 billion deal value and is significantly higher than the $375 million Motorola Mobility must pay Google if it accepts another bid.

Motorola filed a copy of the acquisition agreement between it and Google on Wednesday that spells out the exact terms when this fee is required to be paid. There are two circumstances:1. The agreement is terminated because a government authority (e.g., a

federal court or European Union antitrust authorities) issues a final, non-appealable order blocking the transaction on antitrust grounds.

2. If by Feb. 15, 2013, the transaction has not closed because it is being blocked by the authorities or has not cleared antitrust review, either party can terminate the agreement and transaction. The fee is then payable if two more conditions are met:a. The transaction could otherwise close but for the failure to obtain antitrust clearance or the government blocking the deal.b. Google willfully failed to use its reasonable best efforts to complete the deal or otherwise willfully breached the

requirements in the agreement to obtain antitrust approval.Basically, these provisions can be boiled down to an agreement that if the transaction is blocked on antitrust grounds, then

Google is on the hook for $2.5 billion. But as long as Google complies with the agreement, it will have to fight such a government action in court, and a final disposition of the action has to occur by Feb. 15, 2013.

People close to Google have said they do not believe there are antitrust problems. So why is the fee so big?The fee’s driver is that Google has become what Microsoft was a few years ago, a natural target for European and American

antitrust regulators. For the foreseeable future, any significant transaction Google engages in will really be all about antitrust in terms of getting it done.

Absent this factor, the antitrust risk on this deal seems low. There is not substantial overlap between the company’s businesses. Google, the Internet search engine giant, also produces Android phone software, while Motorola Mobility manufactures cellphones and other wireless devices. Since there is virtually no horizontal overlap, the deal is known as a case of vertical integration. This is where two companies combine whose products are usually made separately but can be used in each others’. An example might be if General Motors bought a steel maker.

In the case of vertical integration, the antitrust authorities would have to show that competition would be reduced to challenge the transaction. This is a hard thing to do in the case of vertical integration because the impact on competition is much harder to measure.

This big fee, however, may not be a signal that there is an antitrust risk that the deal will be blocked, but a statement to the market of the opposite: that there is no such risk. By agreeing (or perhaps even proposing) such a large fee, Google is saying this is not a problem. And antitrust authorities are now put on notice that if they decide to give Google a hard time, the company is not only going to fight this but will be willing to pay for the fight to the tune of $2.5 billion.

This fee may therefore be a statement by Google that the antitrust authorities should tread carefully in examining and challenging this deal.

There is precedent for this. When Microsoft agreed to buy aQuantive in 2007 for $6 billion, it agreed, likely for similar reasons, to a $500 million reverse termination fee, or just over 8 percent of the deal value.

Typically, merger agreements have provisions that also spell out the procedures and steps the parties will take to obtain antitrust clearance. If you look at these provisions in the Google-Motorola Mobility acquisition agreement, they support the theory that this is all about Google making a statement to the antitrust authorities.

The provisions provide Google complete control over the antitrust process. In addition, the agreement does not obtain any species of a “hell or high water” provision. This provision, commonly seen in deals with antitrust risk, requires the buyer to take steps like asset divestitures or licensing of technology to satisfy antitrust regulators and obtain antitrust clearance. But there is no such provision in the Google-Motorola Mobility transaction agreement. This is a boon for Google, because regulators will look at such a provision as an easy way to force concessions. Google does not want to provide antitrust regulators any low-hanging fruit.

To some extent, the high reverse termination fee functions as a form of hell-or-high-water provision, though it is different in an important way. Without this provision, Google can arguably refuse to take any steps to satisfy regulators and simply pay the fee. If there were a hell-or-high-water provision, Google would first have to offer up concessions.

Again, making the fee higher benefits Google. If it were smaller, say only a couple of hundred million dollars, regulators might strong-arm the company into simple concessions, thinking this was chump change to Google. By setting it higher, Google has sent a warning: If you come after us, you better be serious and we are not going to give.

Here, the actual terms specifying when Google has to pay the fee also benefit it. Because so much is at stake, Google will fight any antitrust action and is unlikely to breach the agreement. This would only leave a final order blocking the merger as the way such a fee is payable, meaning a long fight for regulators.

Of course, I am sure Motorola Mobility asked for a high fee and was happy to take it. But the acquisition dynamics play to both parties agreeing to this fee. This $2.5 billion fee is therefore different than the $3 billion fee that AT&T agreed to pay T-Mobile if that deal does not obtain regulatory clearance. In the case of the AT&T-T-Mobile deal, the fee is all about compensating T-Mobile if the deal collapses and assuring it on the risks involved, as well as incentivizing AT&T to do what is needed to obtain this clearance in terms of regulatory concessions.

And for those wondering, the Microsoft-aQuantive deal closed without any significant antitrust scrutiny.Steven M. Davidoff, writing as The Deal Professor, is a commentator for DealBook on the world of mergers and acquisitions.

BlackBerry Maker RIM Again Subject of Takeover TalkBy IAN AUSTEN, NYT, AUGUST 16, 2011, 8:39 PM

OTTAWA — Ever since the introduction of its first BlackBerry more than a decade ago, Research in Motion has defied expectations that it would be gobbled up by a larger rival and has effectively created the market for smartphones.

But as Google moves to buy Motorola Mobility, RIM, already under pressure from diminished prospects and declining market share, is once again the subject of takeover talk.

Since the Motorola acquisition was announced on Monday, shares of RIM, which have suffered for much of the year, have shot up more than 10 percent, mainly on speculation of a sale.

“For a long while the market cap of RIM prevented any kind of takeover,” said Adam Leach, a London-based analyst with Ovum. “I’m certainly not writing them off now, but they have got a tough job.”

Tenille Kennedy, a spokeswoman for RIM, said the company does not “comment on rumors and speculation.”The Motorola deal, which has the potential to shake up the mobile industry, comes at a difficult time for RIM.After pioneering wireless e-mail, RIM has slowly ceded control to Apple’s iPhone and to handsets that run on

Google’s Android operating system. The current lineup of BlackBerrys relies on technology that dates back to the first models of the smartphone.

RIM has moved to spruce up its technology. In 2010, the company bought QNX Software Systems of Ottawa and the Astonishing Tribe, a Swedish user interface design house, to recreate the BlackBerry platform.

But the results have been disappointing so far. The BlackBerry Playbook received a weak reception this spring when it lacked important features like an integrated e-mail application. Last week, Sprint dropped plans to offer a forthcoming model of the tablet computer that would have connected to the carrier’s network.

RIM does not seem in a rush to introduce new Blackberry phones based on the QNX software, either. The models will not be available until later next year, and the company is offering no further specifics.

Still, RIM has plenty to offer suitors. Despite reducing financial forecasts, the company remains firmly profitable. In the latest quarter, the handset manufacturer reported net income of $695 million, down from $769 million in the quarter a year ago.

BlackBerry, too, remains a valuable brand, even as its market share declines.It is the device of choice for corporate customers in important industries like financial services and law enforcement,

which depend on the unique features of the BlackBerry to safeguard their e-mail. The security stems from RIM’s proprietary global network, a system that is hard to duplicate and also generates recurring revenue for the company.

While analysts have speculated in the past that Microsoft could be interested in BlackBerry, that seems less likely in light of the Motorola acquisition, said Al Hilwa, an analyst with IDC in Seattle. If some handset makers that use Google’s Android system switch to Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s mobile technology, then a perpetual also-ran could become a serious competitor. In that case, a deal for BlackBerry would be less necessary.

“Microsoft is the party that stands the best to gain out of this,” said Mr. Leach.A more likely buyer, said Mr. Hilwa, would be a large software company that, like Google, sees wireless as an

important component in its future growth.Alternatively, a cash-rich Chinese handset maker like ZTE or Huawei could view RIM as a way to expand beyond

generic, low-profit phones.Another possibility, if more remote, is the prospect of a better-known Asian manufacturer such as Samsung or HTC

buying RIM to distinguish its products from the Android and Windows Phone competition.A deal for RIM, though, faces significant hurdles.For one, RIM’s co-chief executives, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, are the company’s largest shareholders. Neither

seems interested in losing control. And they will not readily back down from a fight, as the executives demonstrated during a protracted patent battle several years ago that the company eventually lost.

The Canadian government, which must approve any takeover, has also been reluctant to sign off on deals for companies it views as strategic assets. Last year, the country’s regulators blocked the purchase of Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan by BHP Billiton, the Australian mining company. Politicians and commentators have portrayed an acquisition of RIM as an economic doomsday outcome for Canada.

But while a takeover seemed unthinkable during previous debates, the prospects for a RIM deal may be less distant in the current environment.

Google, Motorola and the Patent WarsBy L. GORDON CROVITZ, WSJ, AUGUST 22, 2011

The costs of our broken patent system are often abstract, but this month Google put a price tag on the problem: $12.5 billion. That's what Google paid for Motorola's U.S. smartphone business and its 17,000 patents. This is $12.5 billion that one of America's most creative companies will not use to innovate, fund research or hire anyone beside patent lawyers.

It's not as if Motorola has some must-have patents for mobile phones. Instead, Google wants an arsenal of patents to fight the similar arsenal collected by competitors of its Android operating system for smartphones. These competitors include Apple and Microsoft, which recently teamed up to buy 6,000 wireless patents for $4.5 billion from Nortel.

The value of patents in software and hardware such as smartphones has everything to do with litigation risk. It has almost nothing to do with technology.

"A smartphone might involve as many as 250,000 patent claims" that are largely questionable, David Drummond, Google's chief lawyer, wrote in a blog post earlier this month, before the Motorola acquisition. The arbitrariness of patent grants means mobile-phone operators are inevitably infringing patents, risking billions in infringement lawsuits, but they have no way to know which broad patents will be upheld and which rejected. The best and maybe only defense is a good offense.

"Our competitors want to impose a 'tax' for these dubious patents that makes Android devices more expensive for consumers," Mr. Drummond wrote. So Google responded to what he calls "a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents," by buying (presumably equally bogus) patents of its own.

It's a measure of the deeply dysfunctional U.S. patent system that the most sophisticated technology companies have been reduced to investing in patents to defend themselves from one another.

Many venture capitalists and software entrepreneurs have warned that software is fundamentally different from other areas of innovation and that patents should be granted much more rarely than they are today. Software almost always builds on previous work, so patents rarely reflect the kind of original work that patent law is supposed to protect.

Part of the problem is that the law no longer distinguishes between how ideas become products and services differently in different industries. A good contrast to software is how advances are made in the pharmaceutical industry, which is made up of largely independent areas of research.

There is an "Orange Book" maintained by the Food and Drug Administration that lists all the pharmaceutical patents for each drug, so researchers can avoid infringements. It's hard to imagine a similar effort to summarize software patents. Far from giving such clear notice of patents, lawyers at many software firms tell developers not to waste time trying to parse vague patent claims.

Apple and Microsoft have already teamed up to pressure Google's mobile-phone strategy, so a logical next step would be a patent cease-fire.

Google, Apple and Microsoft could agree not to sue one another and to defend one another against lawsuits by "non-practicing entities" (also known as patent trolls) that buy up patents and set up shop in plaintiff-happy federal jurisdictions.

Patent pools are smart self-help by companies when the law goes awry. They reduce litigation risk, but they also suppress innovation. The sewing machine industry was the first in the U.S. where patent holders had to team up or suffer mutually assured destruction. In 1846, Elias Howe got a patent for the two-thread lock stitch, which was such an improvement to sewing machines that he could charge a license fee of almost half the sales price of the machine.

But as technology developed, his patents no longer included all the required parts of the machines. Litigation in the sewing machine wars ended only when the major companies formed the Sewing Machine Combination, which included the nine key patents to build a machine. This pool began in 1856 and lasted for 20 years.

Two Stanford economists, Ryan Lampe and Petra Moser, studied this patent pool's impact on innovation. In a 2009 paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, they showed that the patent pool did reduce litigation for the participating firm—but slowed the overall rate of innovation. Members of the pool had less incentive to invent and, because the incumbents had amassed so much control, "increased litigation risks for outside firms lower[ed] expected profits and discourage[d] investments." As applied to software, patent pools might cut lawsuits but could suppress invention of the next big thing.

The solution lies in Washington. Congress has debated patent reform for years, but current bills don't address the key issues of overbroad patents or indeed whether software patents cause more harm than good.

Hobbled by a costly patent system, the technology industry is not the engine for global wealth and productivity it could be. If only someone could patent a process for Washington to keep patent law updated to encourage instead of stifle innovation.

Apple Ruling Hits SamsungIn Patent Case, Sales of Korean Company's Gadgets Are Barred in European HubBy ARCHIBALD PREUSCHAT in Amsterdam and IAN SHERR in San Francisco, WSJ, AUGUST 25, 2011

A Dutch court barred units of Samsung Electronics Co. from selling several smartphone models in much of Europe, marking a victory for Apple Inc. as it engages in global litigation to protect its iPhone and other mobile devices.

The preliminary ruling prohibits three Dutch units of the South Korean company from selling the Galaxy S, S II and Ace smartphones because of the way they scroll photos and other information across screens. The method was deemed to be too similar to the way Apple's popular smartphone handles similar tasks.

Wednesday's order takes effect Oct. 13 and covers activities by the Netherlands-based subsidiaries in most European countries. The ruling applies only to Samsung's subsidiaries in the Netherlands. Samsung can export the devices elsewhere in Europe through other operations. But since the Netherlands is an important distribution hub, the company will have to rework its logistics to continue selling the devices elsewhere in Europe. The company also can modify its software to avoid the patent violation.

A Samsung representative said the company will take "all possible measures, including legal action" to ensure there is no disruption in sales.

An Apple spokeswoman reiterated that the Cupertino, Calif., company believes that Samsung had copied its products. The court rejected some of Apple's claims, including that Samsung had copied Apple's device designs.

The ruling doesn't apply to Samsung's latest tablet computer, which was released this summer and runs on Google's Android operating system and is considered the most promising competitor to Apple's iPad. A court in Germany is considering a separate case filed by Apple against Samsung's Galaxy tablet.

Wednesday's ruling came as Apple engages in several legal skirmishes with competitors around the world. Apple has claimed that products running Google Inc.'s Android operating system infringe on its patents. Apple also has locked horns with, among others, Taiwan's HTC Corp. and U.S.-based Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., which is being acquired by Google Inc. for its valuable trove of patents. Apple also has sued Samsung in the U.K., the U.S., South Korea and elsewhere.

More consumers are opting for smartphones over standard mobile devices to get access to such functions as Web browsing, streaming video and applications like games. Smartphone sales are expected to jump about 56% to 467.6 million units world-wide this year and reach 652.7 million units next year, according to research company Gartner Inc.

Apple has notched victories in other jurisdictions as well. Earlier this month, a German court barred the sale of the newest version of Samsung's tablet computers. Apple also won an agreement from Samsung in Australia to postpone the sale of tablet computers until a patent lawsuit there is resolved.

Musing on the Prospects of a Microsoft Counterbid for MotorolaBy MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED, NYT, AUGUST 16, 2011, 8:14 PM

Google’s $12.5 billion deal for Motorola Mobility is widely considered aggressive, with a hefty 63.5 percent premium that few would dare try to top. But analysts at Macquarie seem to think that one of Google’s biggest rivals — a certain software giant based in Washington State — may step up to the plate anyway. In a research note published on Tuesday, Kevin Smithen of Macquarie wrote that Microsoft may make its own bid for Motorola, driven by the patent war roiling the smartphone world.

Here is Mr. Smithen’s thinking: Microsoft has already sued Motorola for intellectual property violations in its line of Android-based smartphones. Microsoft has already won concessions from another Android handset maker, HTC, and is pursuing claims against Samsung.

It is unclear where exactly Motorola’s own skirmish with Microsoft stood as of the Google deal announcement on Monday. But Mr. Smithen thinks that Microsoft might consider just bidding for Motorola outright. (GigaOm reported that Microsoft was already in talks with Motorola, though for a patent deal rather than a takeover.)

In his note, he writes that if Microsoft were to gain control of Motorola’s more than 17,000 patents, “the Android camp would fall even further behind in the patent arms race. Also, MSFT would gain valuable US market share, branding and distribution (esp. at Verizon) that it does not have with Nokia.”

But while intriguing, there are a couple of other points to consider. As Mr. Smithen alludes to in his note, Microsoft has already signed a wide-ranging partnership with Nokia, in which the beleaguered phone maker will use only Windows Phone 7. It might be easier for Microsoft to buy the Finnish company, with which it already has a relationship.

Then there is the matter of Motorola’s tight bonds with Google, since the phone maker’s resuscitation came largely from the success of its Android devices. By contrast, Windows Phone 7 is optimized for Qualcomm’s processors — for the moment, anyway — necessitating either some changes to the operating system or a switchover from Motorola’s current preference, Nvidia Tegra chips.

A slightly lesser factor is that of price. Microsoft currently has a war chest of more than $62 billion, comprised of cash on hand and short- and long-term securities. That compares favorable to Google’s treasure trove of roughly $40 billion. But Microsoft has already committed to at least one big deal, the $8.5 billion takeover of Skype, that would demand the company’s attention.

In truth, however, the actual price a buyer would pay is not as high as a deal would initially seem. Motorola has about $3 billion in cash on its books, which Google is already discounting. And it has tax benefits, called net operating losses, whose value is conservatively $1 billion. So the real purchase price of the Google deal might be closer to $8.5 billion or less.

And then there is the matter of Microsoft taking over a phone maker. Many have already speculated that Google’s Motorola deal will strain its relations with other Android device makers, and some have posited that HTC and Samsung would instead increasingly turn to Windows Phone 7. (For now, those other companies say they are fine with the deal.) But Microsoft would face the same problem as Google if it bought a handset company outright.

None of this is to say that Microsoft definitively will not bid, and as Mr. Smithen points out, a successful jumping of Google’s deal would leave Android much weaker. But it is a decision with a lot of hurdles to overcome.

Motorola shares fell slightly on Tuesday to $38.02.

Corporate News: Apple Looked for a Lost PrototypeBy Ian Sherr, 6 September 2011, The Wall Street Journal, B2

Police officers and Apple Inc. employees recently visited a San Francisco residence in a search for a prototype of one of the tech giant's devices that had been traced to a local home, but left empty handed.

Four city police officers accompanied two Apple employees to the home in south central San Francisco, the city's police department said in a statement on Friday. The police statement didn't say when the search took place or name the device that went missing. However, the department's news release was sent in a document titled "iphone5.doc."

"The two Apple employees met with the resident and then went into the house to look for the lost item," the police said in the statement. "The Apple employees did not find the lost item and left the house." Apple didn't want to make an official report of the lost item, the statement said

The search for the stray device marks the second time in as many years that the Cupertino Calif.-based consumer electronics giant has tracked down a prototype that has slipped out of the hands of an employee. Last year, technology blog Gizmodo published photos of the iPhone 4, which was still under development, after it paid $5,000 for the device to someone who claimed to have found it in a bar.

Samsung Pulls New Tablet From Trade ShowBy Jung-Ah Lee and Evan Ramstad, 6 September 2011, The Wall Street Journal, B8

SEOUL -- Samsung Electronics Co. pulled its new tablet computer from display at Europe's largest electronics show following a court order in Germany, marking the latest blow to the South Korean electronics company in its growing patent dispute with Apple Inc.

Samsung said Monday it is complying with a Dusseldorf court's decision to suspend sales of its Galaxy Tab 7.7, which was unveiled last week at the IFA trade show in Berlin. The same court last month issued a similar injunction on Galaxy Tab 10.1, after Apple accused Samsung of copying elements of the design of its iPad tablet. Both court orders are preliminary injunctions that will be subject to a review Friday, when a judge will decide whether to leave them in place or lift them until the patent case goes to trial.

In the fast-moving technology industry, where products like smartphones and tablet computers are sold for about nine months and then replaced, a sales ban pending the outcome of a legal matter can result in a company missing out on an entire product generation.

The development in Germany is the latest setback for Samsung, which has been embroiled in several lawsuits with Apple over patent infringement involving mobile devices. With the new preliminary ruling, analysts said Samsung not only loses an opportunity to promote its new tablet in one of Europe's biggest markets, but it may also affect future sales of its Android-based tablets.

At the start of the trade show last week, Samsung plastered demonstration models of the 7.7 tablet, which has a smaller screen but is similar in operation and appearance to the 10.1, with stickers that said "Not for Sale in Germany" in an attempt to satisfy the earlier court order. But upon receiving the second court order, the company said it immediately removed promotional materials for the tablet.

Another risk for Samsung is that its marketing of the 7.7 at the trade show could be seen as violating the initial court order, which could lead to a fine. In April, Apple sued Samsung in a California court, accusing the South Korean manufacturer of infringing on its patents and "slavishly" copying its designs. Samsung fired back with countersuits in five countries and the legal battle eventually widened to 19 lawsuits in nine countries.

Apple has also won a preliminary injunction against Samsung in the Netherlands, and Samsung has agreed not to sell 10.1 in Australia ahead of a prospective injunction ruling there. The 10.1, which was released earlier this summer and runs on Google Inc.'s Android operating system, is one of the strongest competitors to Apple's iPad, which has dominated the market since its release last year.

An Apple spokesman in Korea declined Monday to comment on the latest development.In a statement, Samsung said Monday that it respects the latest decision by the Dusseldorf court and decided not to

display or further market the 7.7 at the trade show, which runs through Wednesday.The main difference in the 7.7 from existing tablet computers, including the iPad, is that its screen is built from

active matrix organic light-emitting diodes rather than liquid-crystal display. So-called Amoled screens create their own light, rather than needing backlights as LCDs do, and are thinner and use less energy, as a result.

Samsung investors and analysts say the high-profile litigation likely won't harm Samsung's smartphone business, which is poised to overtake Apple in unit sales this quarter. "The ongoing legal fights between the two may have a short-term noise in the mobile market and could even slow Samsung's tablet sales in the near term, but they will eventually compromise at the end as Samsung also has a broad hardware-related patents," Y.J. Park, analyst at Woori Investment & Securities in Seoul, said Monday.

In an interview with South Korean news outlets at the IFA show on Friday, Samsung Chief Executive Choi Gee-sung said the battle with Apple was "destiny" and portrayed it as part of Samsung's long history of beating other competitors in memory chips, TVs and appliances. "There had been heavy doubts about Samsung, whether we can pass over Sony of Japan and even Nokia," Mr. Choi said, according to Korean media accounts. "But the results say everything."

Samsung five years ago beat Sony Corp. to become the world's top seller of TVs and has been growing at such a rate in cellphones that it may pass Nokia Corp., the longtime top cellphone seller next year.

Corporate News: Kodak Patent Sale Fuels Hopes That May Be Too HighBy Dana Mattioli, 7 September 2011, The Wall Street Journal, B4

Eastman Kodak Co.'s planned sale of patents sparked another round of Nortel Networks fever -- hopes for another investor bonanza following the Canadian telecom company's big-ticket sale of intellectual property this summer.

But some experts are warning that a similar spike may not be forthcoming. They say Kodak's imaging patents are on the fringe of mobile technology and already are heavily licensed. "The assets here are not of the same strategic import as Nortel," said James Malackowski, Chief Executive of Ocean Tomo LLC, a Chicago-based intellectual property brokerage and advisory firm. "These portfolios have so little to do with one another," he said.

At the center of this summer's high-profile bidding wars were patents related to mobile communications, including technology found in smart phones and tablet-style computers. New entrants in those markets are looking to arm themselves with patents for strategic purposes, often because they have few of their own.

In July, Nortel sold a trove of wireless patents to a group of buyers including Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. for $4.5 billion. Google Inc., which lost the auction, later bought hundreds of technology patents from International Business Machines Corp. to defend itself against lawsuits. And in August, Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility Inc., largely to acquire its patents.

Yet patent experts are skeptical about the value left in some of Kodak's patents given their heavy licensing. The strongest patent is one that has proved its mettle in litigation, but over-licensing a patent can diminish its value. Kodak has licenses with more than 30 companies. "We are not going to speculate on the ultimate value of any transaction other than to say that we believe that these portfolios are of significant value," said a Kodak spokesman.

Kodak had long relied on patent licensing to fund the company's turnaround. Between 2008 and 2010, the Rochester, N.Y., company reaped $1.9 billion from intellectual property licenses and lawsuits. Settlements from some of the patents Kodak is now selling brought in $550 million from Samsung Electronics Co. and $400 million from LG Electronics Inc.

Its decision to sell 1,100 patents, including some that were cash cows, came after attempts to strike new deals to license the patents stalled this year, as well as Chief Executive Antonio Perez's desire to test the heated environment for patent sales.

Kodak mainly has pursued makers of smartphones. In July, Mr. Perez said there is plenty of room for further litigation. The portfolio could be applied to other devices with camera functions, such as tablet computers, he said. Kodak also licensed many of its patents by product category, meaning that a company that licensed a patent for use in a smartphone would have to license the same patent again for tablets, Mr. Perez says.

The Nortel and Motorola deals reflect the scramble by companies involved in mobile technology to get hold of essential patents for strategic and defensive purposes, said Alex Poltorak, CEO of General Patent Corp., an intellectual property and patent enforcement firm. While Kodak's patents are relevant in mobile, "they're only tangential," he said.

The Nortel auction caught the eye of many CEOs, said Michael Fitzgerald, CEO of NextTechs Technologies LLC, which acts as an intermediary between buyers and sellers of patents. "I don't believe it will be a significant strategic acquisition the likes of which we just saw go on in the mobile market," Mr. Fitzgerald said. "That doesn't mean it is not a good and valuable portfolio."

RIM Targeted by Small FirmCanadian Investor Jaguar Calls for Board to Consider Alternatives, Including Sale

By Ben Dummett and Judy McKinnon, 7 September 2011, The Wall Street Journal, B6TORONTO -- A little-known Canadian activist investor called for Research In Motion Ltd.'s board to consider a wide range of

strategic alternatives, including a possible sale of the company or its patent holdings -- a fresh sign of investor unrest over the poor stock-market performance of the BlackBerry maker.

Canadian merchant bank Jaguar Financial Corp. on Tuesday asked RIM to form a special committee, including four or five of its seven independent directors, to lead an effort to maximize shareholder value. Jaguar manages assets of 12 million Canadian dollars, about US$12 million, as of the end of June. In an interview, Jaguar's chief executive said it and other RIM investors it is working with own less than 5% of the company's shares, but he declined to be more specific.

Still, the move marks an acceleration of shareholder criticism over the smartphone and tablet maker. RIM's share price has suffered this year amid a series of lackluster product launches. In recent months, RIM has seen its market share for the North American smartphone market shrink, as rivals Apple Inc. and Google Inc., whose Android system powers several smartphones, have come to dominate the market. RIM shares gained 2.8% to $30.97 at 4 p.m. Tuesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Its share price has fallen nearly 50% since the start of the year.

Bigger, better-funded activists have so far stayed away. And RIM has successfully fended off one investor-led attack already. Earlier this year, an activist fund called for a shareholder vote over the company's management and board structure. RIM's two top executives share both the CEO role and the chairman role. But RIM's board managed to convince the investor to back down ahead of a shareholder meeting, after agreeing to study its structure and report back about possible changes by early next year.

Jaguar said it has successfully squeezed more value out of several other companies, but they were small, resource and technology firms. In 2009, Jaguar successfully blocked Canadian miner HudBay Minerals Inc.'s bid to acquire rival copper producer Lundin Mining Corp. But RIM would be its biggest target by far. The investment community in Toronto viewed skeptically its chances of affecting significant change. "They have had some success with small, cash-rich companies, but won't be able to change RIM," said Peter Hodson, a portfolio manager at Sprott Asset Management LP. Mr. Hodson said he doesn't hold RIM shares.

RIM didn't respond to the Jaguar statement or request for comment.Jaguar cited a poor share-price performance, lost market share due to a lack of innovation, recent employee resignations and an

"ineffective" corporate structure among its reasons for calling for change. "The status quo is not acceptable, the company cannot sit

still. It is time for transformational change," Vic Alboini, CEO of Jaguar, said in a statement. In an interview, Mr. Alboini said his fund would start seeking out bigger, like-minded investors to join its effort. He said they haven't yet reached out to RIM's board.

Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. Income Statement10-Dec 9-Dec 8-Dec Growth1Yr

Revenue $11,460 $11,050 $17,099 3.7%Cost of Goods Sold $8,495 $8,897 $14,280 -4.5%Gross Profit $2,965 $2,153 $2,819 37.7%Gross Profit Margin 25.9% 19.5% 16.5% 32.8%SG&A Expense $1,592 $1,561 $2,218 2.0%Depreciation & Amortization $55 $57 $64Operating Income $76 -$1,211 -$2,040Operating Margin 0.7% -11.0% -11.9%Nonoperating Income -$28 -$83 $75Nonoperating Expenses -$52 -$41 $28Income Before Taxes -$4 -$1,335 -$1,937Income Taxes $75 $1,035Net Income After Taxes -$79 -$1,335 -$2,972Continuing Operations -$86 -$1,342 -$2,969Total Operations -$86 -$1,342 -$2,969Total Net Income -$86 -$1,342 -$2,969Net Profit Margin -0.8% -12.1% -17.4%Diluted EPS from Total Net Inc -$0.29 -- --

Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. Balance SheetAssets 10-Dec 9-Dec 8-Dec Growth1YrCurrent Assets

Cash -- -- --Net Receivables $1,913 $1,762 $1,731 8.6%Inventories $843 $688 $1,846 22.5%Other Current Assets $363 $378 $365 -4.0%

Total Current Assets $3,119 $2,828 $3,942 10.3%Net Fixed Assets $806 $807 $974 -0.1%Other Noncurrent Assets $2,279 $2,223 $2,251 2.5%Total Assets $6,204 $5,858 $7,167 5.9%Liabilities 10-Dec 9-Dec 8-DecCurrent Liabilities

Accounts Payable $1,731 $1,430 $2,099 21.0%Short-Term Debt -- -- --Other Current Liabilities $2,115 $1,862 $2,801 13.6%

Total Current Liabilities $3,846 $3,292 $4,900 16.8%Long-Term Debt $96 $56 $57 71.4%Other Noncurrent Liabilities $530 $606 $586 -12.5%Total Liabilities $4,472 $3,954 $5,543 13.1%Shareholder's Equity

Common Stock Equity $1,732 $1,904 $1,624 -9.0%Total Equity $1,732 $1,904 $1,624 -9.0%

Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. Cash Flow Statement10-Dec 9-Dec 8-Dec

Net Operating Cash Flow $606 -$1,104 -$1,236Net Investing Cash Flow -$277 -$66 -$143Net Financing Cash Flow -$383 $1,186 $1,298Net Change in Cash $0 $0 $0Depreciation & Amortization $55 $57 $64

Capital Expenditures -$143 -$67 -$151All amounts in millions of US Dollars except per share amounts.

How Google-Motorola Deal Came TogetherBy EVELYN M. RUSLI,NYT Dealbook, SEPTEMBER 13, 2011, 7:56 PM

It took less than seven weeks, but it became more expensive quickly.From the first discussions in early July to a formal announcement on Aug.

15, Google moved swiftly this summer to secure a $12.5 billion takeover ofMotorola Mobility, according to a filing submitted on Tuesday. The search giant, which was eager to own Motorola’s extensive patent portfolio, was also willing to pay up.

After floating an initial bid of $30 a share on Aug. 1, Google raised its offer price to $37, before settling at $40 a share. In just weeks, the offer increased by more than $3 billion.

For that, Motorola can thank Frank P. Quattrone, whose investment bank was hired on Aug. 1.

The filing, which maps out the background of the merger, discloses how the deal came together in the wake of Google’s failed bid for Nortel’s patent portfolio. In early July — mere days after Google lost out to a consortium led by Apple and Microsoft — Andrew Rubin, the company’s senior vice president of mobile, reached out to Sanjay Jha, the chief executive of Motorola Mobility, to discuss “the possible impact of and potential responses” to the Nortel purchase. Over the next several days, discussions intensified, roping in more executives, including Google’s chief, Larry Page, and Nikesh Aurora, the company’s chief business officer. And by mid-July, the parties had agreed to a confidentiality agreement, as Google began due diligence on Motorola Mobility’s patent portfolio.

Although talks initially centered on Motorola’s patents, the focus quickly shifted to takeover talks. On July 28, Google said it would entertain a bid in the range of high $20s to low $30s. On Aug. 1, it came back with a formal letter and a $30 offer.

Enter Mr. Quattrone. On that day, Motorola Mobility hired Mr. Quattrone’s Qatalyst Partners and Centerview Partners to serve as financial advisers.

According to the filing it was Qatalyst, which has recently advised some of the largest takeover transactions in the technology sector, that prodded Google to go higher. On Aug. 5, after a telephone meeting with Motorola’s directors, an unidentified Qatalyst representative contacted Google’s chief legal officer “to reject the $30 per share offer and suggested that Google increase its proposed price to $43.50 per share.”

On Aug. 9, Google came back with $40 a share.At the tail end of the process, Motorola Mobility’s board considered seeking other buyers, but ultimately concluded

that it was “preferable” to negotiate on a confidential basis with a single potential acquirer, rather than to conduct a private or public auction. Six days later, the deal was done.

Big Patent Firm Sues Motorola MobilityBy John Letzing, 7 October 2011, The Wall Street Journal, B8

Intellectual Ventures, a large patent holding firm, sued Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. for patent infringement Thursday, a move that comes as Google Inc. proceeds with an acquisition of the cellphone maker based largely on its intellectual-property portfolio.

The lawsuit creates a potentially awkward scenario as Google is an investor in Intellectual Ventures. The secretive Bellevue, Wash., firm has amassed a portfolio of more than 35,000 patents and until recently had avoided litigation, persuading big tech companies to become investors instead.

Intellectual Ventures filed its new suit in Delaware, alleging that Motorola Mobility has infringed on six patents related to transferring files among computers and technology used in an "entertainment device," according to the complaint.

Intellectual Ventures was founded in 2000 by Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft Corp. executive who has focused on amassing ideas, rather than products based on those ideas. In May, Intellectual Ventures had filed a legal disclosure naming Google, Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Microsoft and many others as having a financial interest in the firm.

In the complaint filed Thursday, Intellectual Ventures disclosed that it has earned over $2 billion from licensing its inventions. Intellectual Ventures noted in its complaint that it first approached Motorola Mobility about licensing its inventions in January, roughly eight months before Google announced plans to buy the device maker.

Intellectual Ventures is seeking a trial and unspecified damages, according to its complaint. A Motorola Mobility spokeswoman declined to comment. A Google representative didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tony Avelar/Bloomberg NewsFrank Quattrone, chief of Qatalyst Partners.

Samsung Sows Patent ConfusionBy Evan Ramstad, 23 September 2011, The Wall Street Journal, B4

SEOUL -- As the battle between Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. heads back to courts in coming days, it appears that Samsung is trying to sow confusion among courts world-wide over different types of patents.

At the heart of the issue are so-called standard patents, which companies contribute to international bodies and make available to other companies, generally for minimal, though reliable, royalties to make gadgets compatible with each other.

Apple filed a U.S. suit in April against Samsung, alleging that its smartphones and tablets copied important design elements of Apple products.

Samsung countersued in several other countries, saying Apple was using some of the Korean company's patents without authorization.

Apple has said many of those patents were contributed by Samsung to pools of standards patents that Apple had licensed. Standards bodies require patent contributors like Samsung to license their ideas in a fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory manner, known in intellectual-property circles as Frand.

Samsung's strategy appears to turn to a large degree on claiming that such standards patents haven't been sufficiently valued. Samsung's defense, to be presented at courts in nine countries, also questions whether standards patents can be used to force a competitor to give up rights stemming from more-proprietary patents, which aren't in standards pools.

Intellectual-property attorneys say it appears that Samsung doesn't really want either question settled -- it also holds nonstandard patents -- but is trying to create uncertainty so Apple settles to avoid risking a ruling that devalues its innovations.

Representatives of both companies have declined comment on the legal fight beyond statements in court filings.Florian Mueller, a German consultant who runs a blog about software-patent disputes, said Samsung appears to be

counting on the prospect that courts in different countries will approach the Frand issue differently. "It's all about them really not having the depth and strength to say 'Here are three or four killer patents and we'll use them and scare the daylights out of Apple.' They don't seem to have that," he said.

The two companies will appear Friday in a hearing in Seoul that is unlikely to produce a ruling. But in Sydney a court Monday could decide whether to grant Apple an injunction against the sale of some Samsung products.

Facing similar claims by Apple in a German court Samsung argued that Apple's iPad took ideas from the flat-screen computers depicted in the 1968 science-fiction movie "2001: A Space Odyssey."

But the court this month rejected that argument, saying the movie doesn't show specific details of the computers. The court barred the sale of Samsung's Galaxy tablets in Germany.

Samsung's focus on standards patents versus proprietary patents may be its best tool for blunting Apple's claims, attorneys said, because there are few legal precedents.

Patents that create industry standards are given a lower monetary value to increase the affordability and appeal of a standard, increasing its likelihood of widespread adoption.

"While having patents that are standards-based is great because you get revenue, you can't control what competitors do with them," said Jonathan Radcliffe, an intellectual-property attorney at Mayer Brown in London. "The really powerful intellectual-property rights are the patents that are not part of standards."

Squaring Off: The rundown of patent cases between Apple and Samsung. U.S. District Court preliminary-injunction hearing on Oct. 13; trial set for July 2012; International

Trade Commission hearings pending. Germany Samsung barred from selling Galaxy Tab 10.1 on Sept. 9. Netherlands Samsung temporarily barred from selling Galaxy Tab 10.1 and some smartphones

starting in mid-October. South Korea Two evidentiary hearings held, with third one scheduled Friday. Australia Preliminary-injunction hearing set for Monday. Samsung delayed release of Galaxy Tab

10.1 pending hearing. France, Italy, Japan, U.K. No hearings or rulings yet.

Google: 190M Android devices activated, mobile revenue run rate hits $2.5BOctober 13, 2011, Devindra Hardawar, VentureBeat.com

The total number of Android devices activated worldwide has now reached 190 million, Google CEO Larry Page said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call today.

Additionally, the company announced a $2.5 billion mobile revenue run rate — Google’s expected mobile revenue over the next year based on its performance this quarter — up from $1 billion last year.

Google pointed to mobile search as its big mobile moneymaker. “Mobile is becoming a must-have,” Google sales head Nikesh Arora said during the call.

Even though Google doesn’t make any money when Android manufacturers use its software in their phones, the company is able to reap the advertising benefits of having hundreds of millions of users on its own platform.

Page said the company felt comfortable divulging a mobile revenue run rate because there is a confluence of many things growing in mobile. “We thought it was appropriate to round it [mobile revenue] up with a snapshot of where we stand,” he said.

The company said in July that it was activating 550,000 Android devices daily. At this point, I would imagine that number is closer to 600,000.

Page described Google’s third-quarter earnings as “gangbusters.” The company announced $9.7 billion in revenue and $2.7 billion in profit, well beyond Wall Street expectations.

Does Google earn more cash from Apple iPhone than Android?By Jonny Evans, Computerworld, March 30, 2012 - 9:04 A.M.

I love The Wire. Truly one of the classic police dramas of our time, detective Lester Freamon really sums it up when he says: "You start to follow the money, and you don't know where the *** it's going to take you." How is this relevant? Well, today it's relevant to Apple [AAPL] and fresh claims Googlemakes four times as much money out of iOS as it does from Android devices. So who really has the power in that unequal relationship?Incomplete analysis?

I can't claim to be completely convinced at the mathematics behind these claims. I'm also uncertain all Google's money-making activity is necessarily linear. In the long term it must certainly have plans to 'monetize' all that personal user data, preferences and location information it has been gathering for a decade. One day the search engine  will make you searchable, as your digital life is transformed into its digital data.

So, to the claim: Based on data provided by Google as part of a settlement offer with Oracle, The Guardian asserts that Android devices generated less than $550m in revenues between 2008 and the end of 2011, but, tellingly, its deal with Apple generated four times as much cash.

From the report : "The figures also suggest that Apple devices such as the iPhone, which use products such as its Maps as well as Google Search in its Safari browser, generated more than four times as much revenue for Google as its own handsets in the same period."Map this

That's really rather interesting. And underlines just how Apple's move toward offering up its own Mapping tools within iOS threatens Google's bottom line. Another recent move, Apple's decision to add Baidu to the search engines available as options to Chinese iPhones also threatens Google's financially.

That Android isn't earning Google too much cash could be a problem for the beleaguered search giant, which is currently facing international attention from privacy and data protection commissioners for its innovative approach to user privacy. The relative lack of success of its attempts to create a media acquisition system to rival iTunes, and its lack of control of the end user experience of Android handsets is also damaging to its relationship with smartphone buyers.

Its manufacturing partners increasingly find themselves competing against each other for device sales in an industry in which component prices, and component scarcities, are pretty much set by the moves Apple makes.Apple's big stick

Now we learn that Apple has the ability to take a fair chunk of Google's revenue away, revenue that Google sorely needs as the post-PC age begins.

Think about this: As well as noting the $10 per Android device Google makes, The Guardian also points out that the search machine makes around $30 per PC per year. Now consider that as iPads and smartphones increasingly supplant PCs, it is inevitable that Google's PC-based income will slowly shrink. The mobile age is upon us. Google may be fighting for its life.

But the mobile age is just that, mobile. Apple's Siri is another threat to Google. Siri allows users to search for the data they need without direct access to a Web browser. That's because the search requests are spoken with results served-up from access to a number of search tools, without direct contact with the browser. That's a true threat to Google's income, as search moves from the browser and into the air, into the cloud.What else could Google have done?

If Apple's senior management had predicted these trends in the prelude to the introduction of the iPhone, then it is interesting to consider this: If Apple's senior teams, which then included then Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, had correctly identified the radical change in the way we use the Internet that would evolve following introduction of the iPhone (and the advanced smartphones which followed it), then Google executives would have seen the threat to Google's business, the lion's share of which is still generated by conventional browser-based search.

In that context, Google's decision to race into the smartphone space with devices seemingly inspired by the iPhone makes perfect sense. And while Steve Jobs may famously have felt betrayed by these moves, it could be argued that Google didn't have much choice but to do this if it wanted to remain a viable business entity.

However, returning to The Wire and its exhortation to follow the money, right now in mobile, Apple is making more cash on every device, its customers are more satisfied than those using other devices, its developers are making more dollars on the apps, and Google is making more money on iOS than on its own mobile platform. In my opinion, this puts Google in a fairly exposed position as we enter the post-PC mobile age.

Ending this, I know Google has its fans. Please think about this -- I'm not interested in "Apple is bad, you are an Apple fan, you call yourself Apple-holic," forms of argument; I'm interested in how you see Google might potentially evolve its business plan to remain compelling in the future mobile era once Apple replaces it on iOS for maps and search; I'm also interested in what weak spots you perceive in Apple's current business approach. And, for a change, might it be possible to keep things civil, people?