Analyst: Motorola's Best Play Is To Become A Patent Troll & Destroy Android Ecosystem With Patent Lawsuits
from the great dept
Weren't patents supposed to be about encouraging innovation? Of course, the reality is that they're mostly used for the opposite purpose, which is holding back innovation, stopping other companies and cashing in on the lawsuits. It seems that some analysts aren't even pretending that patents are useful for innovation any more. Trip Chowdhry, a somewhat well known analyst in the tech space, is claiming that Motorola has failed in selling its Android-based Xoom tablets, and should give them up. He then suggests that the company go full on patent troll and sue everyone else making Android tablets. Because that will help the market. Think of it as Chowdhry's scorched earth policy: if Motorola can't succeed in Android tablets, no one should succeed in Android tablets. Apparently, Chowdhry thinks this is a good thing, because Android sucks in his opinion (though, not in the opinions of plenty of folks who are happily snapping up Android devices at an increasingly rapid rate...):The successful launch of the iPhone on Verizon, he writes, has "taken the wind" out of Android's sails. The Google app store is "a disaster." Honeycomb, the operating system on which Motorola has hitched its wagon, is "incomplete," "unstable," has a "poor UI" and is basically "dead on arrival."Or, you know, the company could take that effort and focus on making a better product and improving the overall market. But, suing everyone else and burning down the whole Android market is apparently more fun... at least for those with a ridiculously short-term focus on quarterly results, rather than a long-term focus on innovation and actually building out profitable business lines.
All in all, Motorola's "competitive fixation" on Apple (AAPL) and Research in Motion (RIMM) is misplaced. Rather than trying to innovate on software, Chowdry suggests, "selectively attacking with patents other Android phone OEM's is a better strategy."
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Filed Under: android, ecosystem, patents, trip chowdhry
Companies: motorola
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This is getting old.
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He is right about that, it seem that Moto and a few others thought they could slap Google,Android, and honeycomb and magically have million unit sellers.
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Dubious assertions.
-C
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Re: Dubious assertions.
Certain apps were listed as free but when you ran them the tried to push to there website to buy pro version or add on to there app. You had no option of purchasing it from Google.
You use to have a 24hour option to return apps for whatever reason that's pretty much gone. There was no easy way of finding out if app were even compatible if your phone manufacture or OS version.
The list could gone on.
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Re: Re: Dubious assertions.
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PS sorry to say 15 minutes is not enough to put a program threw its paces to see if it meets your needs correctly. I have purchased more than a dozen apps and so far have and have returned two, but it took a few hours to try and track down and figure things out.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Dubious assertions.
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Locking all these features out completely goes against what Android was suppose to be about.
They need to Let open source products do what they are suppose to do. Build off each other until someone develops a complete, easy to use, intuitive app that becomes the default app to use. If I wanted another walled garden I would have bought another iPhone.
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Not sure I want Moto mucking about with the software in ways that don't benefit me, just so that they can turn around and use that as an excuse to avoid pushing updates in a timely manner.
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You say that like it's a bad thing. I can load a custom operating system on my computer. Why not on my tablet/phone? What makes them special?
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(fd: I'm a Xoom wifi owner)
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His bias is showing
I don't have a tablet, but do have a Droid phone and will say it wins hands down compared to the iPhone (IMHO). Many other people obviously feel the same way. The tablets are just now really hitting the market and soon enough Droid tablets will outsell iPads.
All of this is a good thing, competition drives innovation, not patents.
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Re: His bias is showing - correct terminology
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Re: Re: His bias is showing - correct terminology
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Re: Re: His bias is showing - correct terminology
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Cheerleaders..
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Re: Cheerleaders..
This is like suggesting that Microsoft sues their customers. I'm pretty sure even MS learned from that the last time.
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Imagination
I mean I'd rather enjoy Microsoft dropping out of the console race and deciding to sue Sony out of existence, but predicting that's in Microsoft's interest would be a bit of a stretch to say the least.
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Re: Imagination
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Re: Re: Imagination
I was telling a friend last night how I'd like a "one size fits all" console - one that would play PS1/2/3, xBox 1/360 and Nintendo GameCube/Wii games without needing separate consoles. I concluded that there are people out there who could build such a console but would probably get their asses sued off for patent infringement and promoting piracy if they sold such a unit. Personally I would buy one and buy the games too.
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I'm very certain it can combine all of those consoles you mention and the rest....
[obligatory pc supremist]
.... or you could play like real man, on a PC.
[/obligatory pc supremist]
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Re: Re: Re: Imagination
The only practical solution to accomplish what you want is to create an entirely new game console that is a universal console which focuses entirely on getting developers to create games for that platform. This would lead to a monopoly in the console games market and drive hardware prices sky high.
It would be far better to build a cross-platform API that has an interpreter for every OS. Then you could run your game on any PC that has a compatible interpreter. Either that, or the developers could use an open standards API that can compile to every OS out there. OpenGL/CL comes to mind.
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"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
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Then before long someone will patent 'not playing', in case you decide to give up.
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Quarterly profit over longevity
Maybe instead of thinking that your product failed because something else was better, look a little harder at the market and figure out if it's really that big to begin with. I saw my first windows tablet when I was in college, around 2003, and never saw another one until a couple of years ago at my job, when we started selling software to run on a windows tablet. We haven't sold very many. I don't know anyone that has an Android tablet, though I know a few people considering the smaller ones (comparable to the iPod Touch) to replace their old Palm Pilots and such.
I do know a few people with iPads though, and they're the type of people who buy toys just to look cool, who spend money to feel important, and only bought iPad's because they were the next big release from Apple, and that means they needed it in order to be as cool as they felt they were.
Long story short, I don't think tablets are that great, and I think Apple has only been successful with them because their target audience is rich and doesn't have a lot of sense. No one I know has logically evaluated the tablet option and actually decided it was a good move. Most people have a tablet as their phone, or they have a laptop which does more than the tablet could, or they have a netbook for portability.
I think a smarter move than turning patent troll would be to think about something innovative, and move forward with that. Or, because I understand creative thinking is difficult for old companies like Motorola, they could at least put some of their weight behind making Android a better competitor to iOS... but even there, I think the ROI would be lacking....
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Umm... Wow... so biased, and uninformed.
Android's DEX code is faster in many cases(obviously not all, process bound are the most ideal for native assembly). This has to due with the nature of a register based virtual machine versus that of a stack based one. Plus, who knows how many optimizations DX and Dalvik use, let alone the just-in-time compiler of the Android platform since 2.2.
From a purely operating system level view of security, Android wins almost every comparison to iOS(but still thats my {educated} opinion on the matter) (Not saying there isn't room for Android's improvement. Namely a major area that can be improved is allowing applications to be installed if they request a certain functionality, such as Internet access, even if you don't wish to give that functionality to the App. Then, blocking that App's ability to access that resource,the Internet in this example)
The folks at CyanogenMod ( http://review.cyanogenmod.com/#change,4055 ) have been discussing and working on this topic and have a potential solution under review currently.
Another potential Issue to address is having a finer grain permission for Internet access. Instead of [android.permission.INTERNET] for any and all Internet access, [ android.permission.INTERNET_ADVERTISEMENTS_AD_MOBI_DOT_COM ] etc. This would allow ad-driven sites to still access updated advertisements, but not to send data to other locations (while still being fully legit {ignoring tunneling information through the advertiser}).
Also... Android VS iPhone... wow... just a flame war waiting to start, but with the new "phones tracking you" news going around, it is worth mentioning that Android only keeps a temporary cache file, that stores approximately the last two days worth of information(This information needs to be cached for a short while, to determine geo-location, direction, speed, etc. for Applications which you want to allow to track you. Such as jogging apps, gps-navigation, etc). Unlike Apple's which never stops collecting information. (and personally that has to add up... months/years of GPS locations isn't going to be small).
Sorry for the rambling. Hope this helps someone make an informed: decision or built opinion. (And yes I am biased also, though I try to remove that from my objective decision making)
-MAW
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Code smackdown
Thought so.
-C
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Re: Code (not really a) smackdown
I'm not declaring war on the Android NDK or anything. The purpose of my research has been to try and compare these two different tools, and to give guidance on when would be a good point to use native code. As the saying goes: right tool for the job.
Heuristics that only compute bound processes should be put into native code through the NDK, is nice and all, but being able to back it up with facts and statistics of when the breaking-even point is...(for runtime efficiency, ignoring code complexity at this point) thats much better.
Perhaps Programming gods like you don't need academic research, but mere flesh and blood mortals like me can't match your level. So, we'll have to settle on having facts and data to help us make our decisions, not just your omniscience.
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Re: Umm... Wow... so biased, and uninformed.
The folks at CyanogenMod ( http://review.cyanogenmod.com/#change,4055 ) have been discussing and working on this topic and have a potential solution under review currently."""
There is also a project called TISSA (Taming Information-Stealing Smartphone Applications) for Android under development that will basically do the same thing. For specific categories, say Contacts, it allows you to choose Empty data, Anonymized data, Bogus data, or Trusted (meaning real data, I suppose). I'm looking forward to it's eventual release:
http://mobile.engadget.com/2011/04/19/ncsu-teases-tissa-for-android-a-security-manager-tha t-keeps-per/
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Apple has clearly made enough money providing a "walled garden" utopia for its users, so it's time for Apple to simply call it quits and leave the scraps of the market (the "unbelievers" or "heretics") who are not already obsessed with their iDevices to be squabbled over like leftover meat by the losers: RIM and everybody else (Moto, HTC, Nokia, whoever).
After all, since everybody already has an iPhone or an iPad who could possibly want them? (Since, of course, they're so incredibly perfect, if you don't have one by now, you'll just never understand.) What reason does Apple have to stay in the market at all? I say they should just bow out, now that they've clearly proven their hipster superiority, and start suing everyone else for "not being cool enough to own an iPhone."
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Motorola has some pretty good hardware out there for android. They may be a bit off on pricing/market etc, but the hardware incorporates some good tech and design in my opinion. Problem 1: A lot of people like android as an anti-iOS because it has been more open. So what does motorola do, use hardware features to lock down the bootloader, hence negating some of that edge for sales. Probelm 2: They pursued advertising that limited their market from the beginning and forgot to talk about the real world value for people beyond 'flashy' factors. They already have been working against themselves, so maybe litigation is in their 'own worst enemy' strategy. Invest in lawyers and court costs instead of hiring software developers to create a better, more attractive market. +jobs for economy, +more/quality apps for ecosystem = more potential to sell hardware.
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Don't be so sad Mike, things do get better!
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Honeycomb is the 1.0 edition of Android's tablet UI
A similar dynamic is playing out in the tablet space. Apple have an ~18 month or so head start, and 3.0 has visible rough edges that detract from its viability for many users. However, 3.1 (expected later this year) will likely meet the "good enough" standard for tablets that was achieved by 2.1 for smartphones, and the multi-vendor strategy will start to tell the story in sales volume.
Apple have played this game many times before, and they appear to be quite happy with the role of establishing a viable product niche and then settling in as a premium offering rather than going for absolute market dominance (about the only time they've pulled off the latter is with the iPod - for everything else, lower priced competitors have come along with a freely or cheaply licensed alternative)
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The Analyst Mentioned In This Article
Have a nice weekend all.
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