Google's Latest Acquisition: The perils of licensing to your competitors
asymco.com
asymco.com
http://www.asymco.com/2010/11/03/what-do-you-have-to-believe...
His key arguments where that:
* Android wouldn't grow faster than the average of RIM, Nokia, HP and Apple.
* Nokia wouldn't dump Symbian&Meego for someone else's OS.
* Android wouldn't do a great deal better than Windows Mobile
* Android vendors wouldn't be profitable
So not very good really, in fact a total blowout. Maybe he knows stuff about Apple, to be honest I think he's just like a sports fan during a season when his team is playing well. His elaborate theories of why they are succeeding don't seem to mesh with reality much, except in that Apple is doing very well, and I'm not sure he cares if they do or not.
It will be a tightrope walk for Google about who and how to share the longterm plans of the OS with etc.
If anything, I suggest the extremely large number of Google employees who participate here swings the bias the other way. I found it exceedingly odd that--regarding a story about a company paying $12 billion to buy another company, the type of move that is normally considered incredibly risky, and the type of move which does not have a great track record in the annals of corporate history--after making it 3/4 of the way down the comment thread here on HN, there was virtually no criticism. Really? This move is a slam dunk?
I don't know how you construed it as if my comment was against general(if a little overactive) Apple coverage, which is think is well deserved since Apple is doing a lot lately. You were attacking a strawman.
Do you get your news from Apple centered sites and blogs and the comments there? There seems to be an element of cognitive dissonance(or perhaps PR rhetoric?). If this was MS, there would be shouts of paid shills, but I am not going there.
Edit: Samsung made a profit of 1.5 billion dollars off their phones just last quarter.
While HTC's profits are unquestionably growing, their profit share actually declined a bit; remember it's a very rapidly expanding industry. Motorola Mobility, SE and LG are loss-making or close to it. Only Samsung is in a really strong position.
>Besides android vendors aren't really profitable by big margins
and note: opinions that to not match yours can be independent. They don't have to be disillusioned or paid. Learn to respect them.
You mean like Apple?
It's tasteless, but profitable.
The problem is that they are bandied about as independent opinion and analysis.
Gruber sells ads on his RSS feeds, which seem to cost thousands of dollars each, thanks to advertising by iOS apps. No wonder he plays to his fanbase with the pro-Apple and anti-Google/Android/MS rhetoric. He must be laughing all the way to the bank while thinking up his next 'The precisely perfect placement of the Chair at Macworld' and 'Dirty Percent' article. Also, he gets invited to Apple events, which may quickly disappear if he gets too critical(see Gizmodo).
Regardless of the above quote, I do not accuse them of lying. But there's a strong elementy of hypocrisy and fanboyism, both in supporting Apple almost all the time, and screaming bloody murder and abject criticism of any moves by Apple's competitors.
Do you seriously think analysis by Asymco, Gruber and Marco regarding Apple are the flawless gospel truth?
The fallacy you mention would apply more to the accusations of commenters being paid MS shills, which happens all the time here on HN too.
hnsearch disagrees with you.
Even CamperBob's comment is (in context) referring to commenters on sites like InformationWeek. Even if we generously interpret it as meaning what you say, the idea that it "happens all the time on HN" is a stretch.
Why would I have to believe that in order to respect their opinions? I’m not going to sink to the level and just attack them without actually engaging with their arguments. They are coherent and they have arguments, they deserve a response and not just blind attacks.
I’m not sure what any accusations (So, when did that happen?) have to do with that.
The OP is a good example of this. Asymco's wrong many times and whenever it's wrong it's seems to have erred on the side of Apple. Still, the headlines draw interest and page views. What does that tell you?
For example, lets take this post. http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/08/15/apple-samsung-im...
If it was Google or MS instead of Apple there, Gruber would be screaming bloody murder about wilful manipulation of the law to further their ends and harm Apple's ascendancy. Am I wrong?
Since it is Apple, it is just 'one image' and 'sloppy lawyering'. Very predictable even before you read it. This is the opinion that we are all supposed to respect?
It's called spin, or a very biased opinion that needs to be taken with a spoon of salt. It's as close to Apple PR as you can get, aimed at a very specific audience.
It’s very weird what you expect of Gruber. It just doesn’t make any sense.
Just a little more honesty and less hypocrisy would certainly help. As the OP said, those sites are more like sports team fanboy sites or political mouthpieces tailored to the audience/readers.
To go off on a funny tangent:
Well, maybe I just don't get it unless I am in the RDF myself. http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/17/bbc-loving-apple-looks-like-a...
That is why maybe all those sites feels weird to me but seem perfectly fine to many others!
One of the big reasons profitability matters is because it drives future investment. To the extent that component manufacturers are making money porting Android to their components and selling the combination, they're going to keep investing, even if their downstream customers are locked in a brutal price war.
Riiiiight. I was at an OHA company during the early Android days post-Google. OHA was created by Google to make their subcontractors look like "partners" in Android development. There was no boss other than Google in this project.
And recent events tend to show that Moto Mobility would not have been able to continue to sell smartphones if they had sold their patents to Google.
I am not sure about that, companies like Intellectual Ventures/Lodsys do all kinds of manipulations.
>And recent events tend to show that Moto Mobility would not have been able to continue to sell smartphones if they had sold their patents to Google.
That wouldn't work like that. Google would (need to) provide patent indemnification to Android licensees like Microsoft does with their desktop Windows and mobile WP7.
A reason for them not to announce it is fear of drawing the attention of anti-trust regulators.
Phone manufacturers made their choice a decade ago. They picked closed, complex, developer hostile platforms. Now, it seems, that was a mistake. Phone manufacturers get to fund Apple, Google, or Microsoft's, move into their markets.
That's not to say that Google won't make much money off the physical device, but I think Google's aim is to increase revenue from Android (ultimately adverts) by making the platform better.
Wasn't there an article recently about how Samsung supplies a large chunk of the components in the iPhone? It's a different department but isn't it the same dilemma?