Google’s influence on Motorola’s hardware won’t be evident until late next year
In the financial conference call Google held today, Google CEO Patrick Pichette talked about the Google-Motorola marriage and what it meant for the future of Motorola’s product line. He first reminded folks that in the 150 days since the acquisition, Google has “harmonized” and scaled back Motorola’s product line (which we believe means less crap and better quality), pulled out of several different markets, undertook the streamlining of software, and more.
That last bit would seem true already as the new versions of MotoBlur are as close to vanilla Android as they’ve ever been. And while Google originally shied away from questions of its plans for Motorola by saying they’d continue to operate as they always have, Pichette kind-of sort-of confirmed that Google would be doing more to influence Motorola’s product line in the future.
He was quick to remind everyone that product cycles take time. From the beginning of R&D to a retail launch takes 12-18 months on average, which means if Google has a hand in the development of new Motorola devices its impact wouldn’t be made evident until sometime in Q4 of next year at the earliest.
He also wanted to cool down the panic mode that seems to have swept the news wire as the company suffered a major stock hit after missing expectations for the quarter. Pichette says the Google-Motorola story has only just begun, and while we’re not promised a fairy tale ending just yet we can surely expect an exciting plot as it thickens.
Before we get out of hand we need to remember one thing — this does not automatically entitle us to a Motorola-made Nexus device (at least not right away). While droves of us would love for that to happen Google’s making it clear that other OEMs will still get fair shots at making Nexus devices. How long that stance might last remains to be seen, but I can tell you one thing: many of us wouldn’t mind having Motorola make Nexus devices for years to come.