Google to close Motorola smartphone factory in Texas | Hacker News Reader

Google to close Motorola smartphone factory in Texas

bbc.com

60 pointsoori44 comments

Woah, talk about fickle..

    The future of manufacturing is going to be standard platforms with high
    customization around them. Common components and then customized wrappings,
    if you will. The reason is that consumers are pretty sophisticated and want
    their own thing but you can't build a phone for each and every person
    that's different. It's very difficult to achieve that…with a supply chain
    that's in Asia, even with modern jets. It has as much to do with time zones
    and culture and language. There's reasons why in a (creative)
    hyper-competitive industry you're going to end up with advanced
    manufacturing in the U.S. And this is a trend that we're beginning to see
    in many industries

— Eric Schmidt, 2013-08-02 http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2013/08/01...

You realize that Motorola has been sold to Lenovo, an asian company?

Yes thank you, I was reminded by the 4th sentence of the article. If you continue reading all the way to the 5th sentence, you'll discover that deal has not yet been finalized.

I doubt Lenovo would appreciate a contract in a market they're not necessarily interested in pursuing.

Lenovo definitely wants the brand recognition and distribution network of Motorola in US, but I don't see why they would want to keep the factory there.

Yeah, then people didn't buy and proved him wrong.

It's been reported that Google senior management was never really committed to Motorola or the handset business[1]. The fact they took so long to launch a new flagship product (after first trying to use the IP arsenal against Apple while simultaneously winding down much of Motorola's other lines and businesses) and then selling the company mere months after the launch of it, seem to back this up circumstantially.

I will say this, The Moto X is a really solid product. The smart display, speech recognition capabilities and Moto Assist make it one of the nicest Android phones I've ever used for practical purposes. The Moto G and Moto E look to be really solid values as well.

The bad thing about this kind of corporate maneuvering here in the states is it makes the "American-made" angle they were playing for PR & political purposes seem manipulated and cynical. Maybe that's just not that important to most people though. I'm sure it was important to the people working there.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/motorolas-super-powered-googl...

>Maybe that's just not that important to most people though.

It's not important to me: I'm satisfied that the theory of comparative advantage shows that free trade is good, and protectionism (even in the form of individuals preferring goods made in their own nation) is harmful to all countries. Presumably Google will put a positive spin on anything they do, and make the arguments that are best received by the public, not the most logical arguments.

>I'm sure it was important to the people working there.

Switching from supplier A to supplier B will always be bad for supplier A. Does that mean we should never switch suppliers? Or maybe it means we should always switch supplies (since it's good for supplier B).

I almost elaborated in my comment that for me personally it wasn't about protectionism, as much as a desire for a country that literally invented many high technology industries to simply regain some basic capacity and infrastructure to produce those goods again. I don't think it's incongruous to value free trade and the advantages of specialization and globalization but also like to see one's country able to produce more physical goods than just hamburgers or lattes.

I have a Moto X. I wanted the 32 GB variety (for $50 more, it made sense aside from personally wanting the additional capacity).

Well, the store only had 16 GB models in "default" all-black and all-white configurations. So, I was sent to the Moto Store or whatever they call it.

Or I wasn't, per the cell phone company. Or I was, per the Store that subsequently sent me an email through which to order the phone I'd already paid for.

I'm leaving off many steps. The process was a big pain in the ass.

Except that Motorolla was/is on the door, in some ways it felt rather typical Google. Ostensibly, it should work. In practice, it's quirky, and when it's a problem, it's difficult to get someone to actually sort it out.

Ultimately, I had a clueful cell phone store manager walk through as much of it as he could. They didn't even call him back. The order did not then proceed as they told him it would (this included credit for a phone that I ordered ("you don't need to use the Moto Store / customization for a 32 GB all-black... It's on its way") that was never delivered -- but for which I was billed (yeah, our representative told you the wrong thing; if we do nothing further, you can consider the order cancelled)). But ultimately, after using the emailed "customize your order" link despite one further representative telling me not to, they sent one, and it works.

I didn't think this "U.S. 'manufacturing' (assembly)" was going to stick around. Didn't take too long to be proven right.

In this specific case, some genius decided to provide their cell phone stores with no 32 GB model stock (e.g. in all-black, at least) -- only 16 GB.

As others have pointed out, so many people "case" their phones that the color choices are significantly if not entirely moot -- from my perspective, at least.

It's a nice phone. They should have focused on actually making it easier and painless to get into people's hands.

"G" and "E" will in good part also succeed because you can just go into a store and fucking buy one. No one really wants this customization and wait for the package crap -- especially not when it starts to get this painful.

P.S. And when it means dealing with two independent companies' somewhat clueless support, as opposed to just one -- and they aren't even talking to each other (or, not well).

P.P.S. I really wanted this to work out, limited as it may be ("assembly"). And it's one reason I chose the X.

I got a Moto G and I really like it.

It was cheap enough that if it broke, I wouldn't be too upset. My rule is if I have to get insurance or if I am afraid of breaking it too much, then I can't afford it, and Moto G was in that range.

I've had it for about half a year. At no point in this time period, for example, have I thought "Gee I wish I had something more powerful". Granted this is the most powerful phone I've had, so maybe if I handled an iPhone I would be blown away, but so far so good, I am very happy with it.

Motorola still sells great phones. Android doesn't have high system requirements and computing power has dramatically increased, become cheaper, and more energy efficient in the past few years, it's not too difficult to build a long-lasting and great phones anymore, which is bad for phone manufacturers because they rely on people purchasing phones frequently.

Even though I'm very tempted to purchase a Moto G or E I can't help but to stick to the Nexus phones though. If HTC or Motorola would just sell phones without custom software and pre-installed applications and would have a 3 year update policy, only then would I purchase from them.

I have no problems installing custom ROMs to keep a phone up-to-date but I really shouldn't have to.

> Moto G or E I can't help but to stick to the Nexus phones though.

Moto G I believe is pretty minimal. There are a few "Motorola" apps. But dialer, calender almost everything else is vanilla Google Android

While this isn't a guarantee that you'll get updates, you can definitely get a moto g (and a pile of other phones) without any carrier customization now as a "play edition" phone[1].

[1] https://play.google.com/store/devices/details/Moto_G_Google_...

It's great to see Google doing these Play editions, I didn't realize that it was available for so many devices. https://play.google.com/store/devices/collection/promotion_5...

I'm going to get a Moto G, I was considering it a few days ago even though I don't really need a new phone (Nexus 4 has been dropped, thrown, and ran over a few times, put a screen protector on to hold the glass in place).

Is it Google closing this, or Lenovo, now that the sale has completed? It seems to me that the agenda has changed now that it's changed hands.

The deal will close later this year according to the WSJ. It's still owned by Google.

Which probably means Lenovo has no interest in buying the factory and Google will have no use for it after the sale

Yeah, Lenovo aren't going to get the same symbolic benefit from manufacturing in the US as Google did.

Google's Motorola Mobility has said it will close its Fort Worth, Texas factory after its Moto X smartphone failed to appeal to consumers.

The facility - which is the only smartphone factory in the US - opened in May of last year.

At its peak, the factory employed 3,800 people, although now only 700 workers remain.

It's only been open a year and is already down to 700 workers from a peak of 3800?

Maybe most of the original ones were contractors.

Having read about this in a Fort Worth paper, apparently most of the current "employees" are contractors. I gained the impression that this was always the case.

P.S. Meaning, people employed by a third-party contracting company. You know the drill...

but Android is winning.

Moto X is a good phone. It was a huge disappointment when I heard about the price at launch. It could not compete on price with the Nexus line. Add that to the fact only AT&T customers get the moto customizer. Too bad, I live within a few miles of the factory.

You can customize the Moto X from any carrier now, the exclusive ATT deal ended last year.

> It was a huge disappointment when I heard about the price at launch. It could not compete on price with the Nexus line.

Sigh. The nexus line is sold AT COST. If you expected a retail phone to compete against a phone that is not trying to make any money you will always be disappointed.

Well, the Moto X and the Nexus 5 are now indeed the same price.

Motorola did have several major glitches with the Moto X launch: price too high, quality control issues at the assembly plant, mediocre camera software, customization limited to AT&T contracts.

By the time they'd fixed those problems, they'd missed the boat. I bought my Moto X a few weeks ago and it's the best phone I've ever seen, but all the buzz has moved elsewhere.

I hope for their sake that Motorola get the launch of the forthcoming X+1 right, because they make a very strong line of phones and I'd love to see them succeed.

It's not really a smartphone factory though is it? It just assembles the custom casings.

Maybe if they wanted the launch to be a success they should've opened it up to more than one country and more than one carrier

Technically users have a ton of influence on products but it doesn't seem very organized. Websites are usually limited to product information but it shouldn't be to hard to expand the info with production locations, political situation and wages. Profit distribution tells me a lot about a product. To support billionaires paying the lowest wages in the world could just be weird enough that one doesn't want to have any part in it.

I think a cool technical solution would be to increase the prices by an abuse scaled donation to a relevant aid organization. That way the end user doesn't have to investigate all the ins and outs of the geopolitical circus.

Comparing features is already hard enough.

"Don't be evil."

What is evil about this?

Perhaps it would be better to ask an employee who 8 months ago may have started a family on the strength of a loud endorsement to move manufacturing back home. What's the real harm? Just a few empty promises, no laws broken and a mere 700 dashed spirits, but it's all worthwhile in pursuit of the dream - whatever it happens to be this quarter.

So they should do what the army does, and spend billions to produce tanks that end up somewhere in the desert because the army doesn't want them, and it may cause some job loss?

Of course not, that wouldn't be good business, but we're not concerned with that here. The parent comment asks what is evil about it, which is to ask whether it is moral to spend millions on an advertising campaign that implies job security, and less than a year later turn those same jobs into a fire sale.

There is a huge continuum of possibilities for how the Motorola sale should play out, but when the reality is an extremely profitable corporation pulling the rug from under 700 low wage contractors with minimal notice, despite explicitly claiming the contrary less than a year previous, just setting fire to the building and walking away somehow strikes me as a particularly immoral outcome.

So they should instead do what?

It's too late to do anything about it now, but I also think it was in kind of in bad faith for Google management to play up this whole Motorola enterprise as "bringing back tech manufacturing jobs to the U.S." and Texas specifically with big press events replete with politicians and all of that stuff.

Business is business and perhaps folks who were encouraged by that kind of dog-and-pony show are rubes anyhow, but it feels very "un-Googly" for them to have gone that route PR-wise if they weren't seriously committed to it and it's pretty clear they weren't.

If Google had done nothing, would those jobs likely have remained in the US? If not, what is the complaint here?

The complaint is simply that Google repeatedly and intentionally signaled a big public commitment to creating tech manufacturing jobs and selling American-made cell phones and this couldn't have been their actual intention.

There's nothing else to do or say, really. Rightly or wrongly Google has an image of being different than most politicians and corporations and so that's why people are disappointed. I get why they did what they did, I just don't think they needed the political, PR head fake.

Isn't the obvious interpretation of what happened here that Google wanted to create tech manufacturing jobs in the US, spent an enormous amount of money trying to create tech manufacturing jobs in the US, and simply failed?

And, that being the case, it's very relevant to ask "what would have happened had Google not tried to do this?". From what I can tell, the answer is "those people who are losing their jobs due to this plant closure would have lost those jobs earlier."

Having closely followed the activities of Motorola and what Google's been doing with it post-acquisition, it's (now) obvious to me they were always trying to safely unwind it & protect the rest of their hardware partners[1]. The upside that they were hoping for was that the IP portfolio would be a good defensive weapon against Apple instead of an offensive one against other Android ODMs, but that didn't pan out. They were never expecting to be a major ODM themselves for the long haul.

You're right that the contractors working at that facility may have gotten their walking papers earlier had Google had not come around post-Nokia (it was a most recently a Nokia plant - not a Motorola one, IIRC), so there is that to be said.

Again, my complaint is that it's just terrible optics for Schmidt et. al, to have signaled a commitment to growing U.S. manufacturing and then sold this enterprise not 2 full quarters from tepid launch of a toned-down flagship that didn't even get full support from the parent company's management.[2]

Additionally, Google did not really spend an "enormous" amount of money creating tech manufacturing jobs. They shrunk Motorola and phased out numerous lines and support for them and released thousands of Mobility workers before even launching the Moto X.

Yes, this might have happened anyway, but it's not like they were trying to grow the business organically. They were winding it down (and getting it ready for sale) while talking about growing it.

They were also able to take advantage of Motorola's losses to offset their own corporate tax liability and I'm sure they got manufacturing credits in Texas on that plant, which is why they had Gov. Rick Perry and all the cameras there and played up the whole "bringing back jobs" angle even though they were all temporary contractors.

[1] http://www.unwiredview.com/2011/08/11/motorolas-sanjay-jha-o...

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/motorolas-super-powered-googl...

I'm sorry but this is bullshit.. the obvious interpretation is that Google wanted the patents and ended up with a business line they weren't interested in. Leveraging it for PR the way they did was insincere at best, especially on such a short timeframe.

Also it's entirely unclear to me what the outcome might have been for Motorola as a whole, had Google not been having wet dreams about its patent portfolio. Perhaps you have some insight here that you're not sharing?

Maybe you should take it up with your local government.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com