Does Google selling Motorola threaten the Nexus line?

[I Can Be Your Hero]

Don't know if selling Moto would threaten the Nexus, however rumours are going around that Google may be killing off the Nexus line and just offer GPE of phones.

That would be fine with me except that they don't release those things outside of America.....so people who don't live in the US like me get screwed over....

 

[anon(7808135)]

I don't think the Nexus line is leaving anytime soon. I think that with Motorola being away from Google now, Google can focus on their Nexus devices.I would like to see Google kick off their Nexus devices like crazy during 2014.

 

[kgbkny]

I love android and owned the galaxy nexus, nexus 4, and now the 5. If they ditch the nexus program I'm out. I can never go back to skins and late updates. Things are looking a bit gloomy right now. Only to.e will tell. But only around what like 5% of people use nexus phones so what does it matter. Haha

I completely agree with everything in your post. If Google moves forward with expanding the GPe program, I'll definitely stay with Android. Before getting the Nexus 5, I had a Galaxy S4 GPe (now used by my wife) and it received updates just about as fast as the Nexus line.

 

[mwara244]

Droid Life, which hates unsubstantiated rumors, is pointing to the fact that Google May Give up the nexus line all together by 2015. I read this on quite a few sites as rumors and those sites weren't as credible either.

So it seems the whole Samsung/ Google Cooperation agreement stands around Samsung giving up their own mobile os called Tizen and their services that directly compete with Google play and Google services in return for Google to give up all mobile hardware that is in direct competition to Samsung, except for nest and the small research group formed under motorola , i forget the name. Also samsung and Google will cooperate with patents and software with each other, which means some TW could make it to AOSP, and that Samsung will scale back TW from being so over bloated.

Google worried that if Samsung left the ecosystem of Android would do a lot of harm to Android and it's partners that are barely skating by in the mobile markets. And all the ad revenue Google receives from Android as well. Google is first and foremost an Advertiser and receives most of their money from it.

Also with the new Patent war of Rockstar Consortium, it also serves Samsung and Google to combine their patents in a preventative measure from the patent trolling that is about to start. Sooner or later Rockstar will come after Samsung. It's just too bad our congress never passed the patent bill, or anything last year because of the Republicans obstruct everything plan which lead to set a record of Congress least active year ever in the history of the US. I thinks it wrong for a company that makes nothing to be able to purchase patents just to sue everyone for licensing fees. There should be a use it or lose it patent system. But we all know how broken the system is.

I just hate the fact that such a Historical American company like Motorola has been sold off to China. Motorola who created innovative mobile radios for our troops in WW2 to Vietnam, and created the first Cellular calls and phones, to be just thrown away like a Turkey carcass to be picked over for what ever meat left on the bone. I really thought Google was going to raise them upright and start a new trend of bring real jobs back to america and set an example. Now all those in Texas who just got their good jobs will probably lose them by the end of the year because Chinese slaves that will work for $1 an hour are cheaper than paying American wages. Too bad Google couldn't try to protect those jobs at least for 2-3 years at the minimum.

 

[bjrosen]

Owning Motorola was awkward for Google, they had to bend over backwards to prove to their Android licensees that they weren't favouring Motorola over the other manufacturers as a result Motorola was never allowed to build a Nexus device and they were allowed to be very competitive. Google may have used the dumping of Motorola as a bargaining chip to get Samsung to back off of their aggressive forking of Android.

One of the big problems in the Android world is the forking of Android by all of the manufactures which makes it impossible to update most devices in a timely manner or frequently to update them at all. The reason that they build Nexus devices is so that it's possible to buy a pure Android device that gets timely updates. If manufacturers stopped layering on their own crap we wouldn't need Nexus devices. It looks like Google is finally addressing the forking issue. They have moved to a model where the innovations are mostly in the apps and in the cloud which is where the belong and away from tying everything to the OS. They also seem to be working to convince the manufacturers to offer cleaner versions of Android. The rumor is that in 2015 they will move to GooglePlay only systems and drop Nexus altogether. Assuming that they can make the GooglePlay model work, i.e. get enough manufacturers to offer clean versions of their products and assuming that they can get to a point where Android upgrades can roll out easily to all of the GooglePlay devices, then this will be fine. In theory this can work. I upgrade my Linux distros continuously on a lot of different machines without any problems so why can't you do the same with Android which is just another Linux distro?

 

[Citizen Coyote]

Short answer: no.

Long answer: The decision to end the Nexus program, if that happens, will be made independent of the Motorola sale. Right now all we have are unsubstantiated rumors. I don't care who posts them, be they fly-by-night rumor mills or self-described facts-only websites. Until we get official word from Google, they will only ever be rumors, and not worth worrying over.

For what it's worth, Google said yesterday they were very pleased with sales of the Nexus 5.

 

[Caleb Pelton]

I have no Intel on how Google may proceed. But, I can say that if the Nexus line is dropped, I will reexamine my OS stance. I made the jump from iOS to Android for the bigger screens, NFC technology, and this phone (Nexus 5). But, if they end it and Apple finally adopts a bigger screen I'll likely go back. I realize my stance here makes no difference to those making these calls.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Ry]

It would need to be a phone manufactured to have both CDMA and GSM antenas, which I was surprised the N5 has. Most phones don't to save costs.

Untill I see one, I'll continue to be skeptical

Basically every recent Verizon phone has had CDMA, GSM, HSPA, and LTE capabilities. It's not unheard of. The CDMA carriers just need to play ball and Sprint is with the Nexus. No reason why a GPe couldn't do the same.

 

[xchange]

Not at all. Watching how Google branches out in technology to other fields besides smartphones (ie Chromecast, Nest, automobiles etc) I think the whole purpose of acquiring Motorola was driven by that, and not handsets specifically. They kept 15000 of those patents and only gave Lenovo 2000 handset specific ones.

I'm still watching to see what's going to become of the statement by Andy Rubin that he finally exited Android to pursue other Google initiatives which he refused to specify. Most people associate Google with Search, Chrome, and Android, but if you dig a little you'll find out they have their fingers in a LOT more than that, several of which are quite a departure from computers and handsets. They're also involved with crisis response technology, biotechnology and much more.

 

[zkSharks]

Any such decision will likely depend, to some degree, on how well Google can effectively combat version fragmentation while also shifting the third-party Android ecosystem closer to their vision for the platform, if that is in fact their intention right now. The article below, by Alex Dobie, is very much relevant:

Solving the impossible problem of Android updates | Android Central

 

[onthecouchagain]

I don't foresee the Nexus line ending, but what do I know? I'm just a guy on the couch. Again.

 

[saint satin stain]

I love android and owned the galaxy nexus, nexus 4, and now the 5. If they ditch the nexus program I'm out. I can never go back to skins and late updates. Things are looking a bit gloomy right now. Only to.e will tell. But only around what like 5% of people use nexus phones so what does it matter. Haha

Add to what you say that I could not afford the other high end phones and tablets; I like simplicity, so the skins and so called good features of the other high end phones annoy me. I have only found one Google app that annoys me a bit, Play Music. Play Music is a money source for Google; it's a expression of Google's desire to make it easy for you to buy books, music, and apps etc from them; also you upload all your music to their servers, which along with the music you buy can be streamed to your device.
I stream all of my Documents folder (located on D drive) from the Wifi enabled portable hard drive I have in my pocket. I use Play Music to download music I buy from Google.
Reason why Apple and Google make (I know ASUS and LG actually make them for Google) devices without FM tuners, removable batteries, and SD slot, expandable space is money. They haven't found a way to monetize FM radio. Your battery goes blink you have to send device to them; if batteries are removable you could buy oem batteries on Amazon, Ebay, and other sites at reduced prices. If devices had expandable space, you would not need a streaming source. I solved the first; partially solved the second, batteries, where with previous phones I carried two charged backup, and now I carry two portable solar chargers; for the third I bought a cheap, replace later with better one, Memorex AM/FM radio. These acquisitions jumped my Nexus 4 up in personal value to me. Only deficiency, a lack of LTE. The Nexus 5 solves that. I'll buy one this year. I wait until after the first update.
Google I'd call crazy to stop the Nexus lines; the industry wouldn't approve of it; it introduces high end android devices to non tech folk at affordable prices, and gives the tech and dev communities an inexpensive device to play with. They benefit the other makers. I've seen local examples of this, one of my grand nephews bought a Nexus 4 because he could afford it at the time; yet, he saved and bought an S4 because of the features. I buy Nexus devices because I don't want those - questionable - features. The consumers are mostly non tech and non dev, so features are what they want, the hip features (should I say cool?).

ASUS had 2 tablets in PCMag.com's top ten; one, Asus Transformer Book T100TA (64GB), an editor's choice. The other editor's choices were Google Nexus 7 (2013) and Apple iPad Air. O

 

[gorebash]

Very possible. Hope not, but Google sees it as a lesser evil to letting Samsung going off on its own path...

 

[mrsmumbles]

According to the rumors, Touch Wiz isn't going away. It's said the S5 will have an "evolved" version of Touch Wiz and I very much doubt that means it will be a lot lighter.

So I don't know what if any concessions Samsung has agreed to with Google. In the same article Google & LG were apparently pleased with sales of the Nexus 5 and a Nexus 6 is assured for 2014. But after that they'd be wrapping up the Nexus line.

I hope it isn't true. I'm not sure what else I'd want other than BlackBerry. I like Android but if it's overlaid with a heavy UI I'm not interested. And yes, Google would lose customers who feel the same but they may think the number is negligible. And the GPe phones are too expensive for me unless I save up for several months.

I hope the rumor isn't true.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk 2

 

[xchange]

I'm of two minds about this. I used to much prefer Nexus over OEM phones, and for tablets I still feel that way. However the last round of OEM phones that came out during the last quarter of 2013 impressed me more for the first time ever than the Nexus 5. If they continue to do that I'd be ok with the Nexus line ending.

Having said that, the other side of the coin is that without Google designing Nexus phones, that might encourage the OEMs to make departures that are too drastic from vanilla. Even though I currently don't want a nexus phone this time around, I would still prefer they keep making them so that there's some sort of design baseline in the software

 

[RealDogBoy]

According to the rumors, Touch Wiz isn't going away. It's said the S5 will have an "evolved" version of Touch Wiz and I very much doubt that means it will be a lot lighter.

So I don't know what if any concessions Samsung has agreed to with Google. In the same article Google & LG were apparently pleased with sales of the Nexus 5 and a Nexus 6 is assured for 2014. But after that they'd be wrapping up the Nexus line.

I hope it isn't true. I'm not sure what else I'd want other than BlackBerry. I like Android but if it's overlaid with a heavy UI I'm not interested. And yes, Google would lose customers who feel the same but they may think the number is negligible. And the GPe phones are too expensive for me unless I save up for several months.

I hope the rumor isn't true.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk 2

I doubt that Google's flagship Nexus will be a 6" phone. I'd bet on a 2014 edition of the Nexus 5 -- same form factor, which I believe is the sweet spot.

I also don't think the Nexus line will go away in the foreseeable future. They have been expanding it for the last few years. The acquisition of Motorola probably wasn't motivated by the desire to get into manufacturing handsets (they wanted certain patents, which they kept) so selling off the handset business was always part of the plan. However, I imagine that they wanted to get a better price -- if the Moto X had been more successful they would have gotten a better deal on this sale.

 

[mrsmumbles]

I doubt that Google's flagship Nexus will be a 6" phone. I'd bet on a 2014 edition of the Nexus 5 -- same form factor, which I believe is the sweet spot.

I also don't think the Nexus line will go away in the foreseeable future. They have been expanding it for the last few years. The acquisition of Motorola probably wasn't motivated by the desire to get into manufacturing handsets (they wanted certain patents, which they kept) so selling off the handset business was always part of the plan. However, I imagine that they wanted to get a better price -- if the Moto X had been more successful they would have gotten a better deal on this sale.

I hope you're right about the Nexus phones continuing. I didn't think the Nexus 6 referred to inches in the article I read but to the successor of the 5th Nexus phone.

I wouldn't have thought they'd discontinue the line but nothing is certain. I wonder how much money they've lost or made on it. The article said it put lg in third place for most successful phone maker (my words), on the basis of the Nexus 5 selling so well.


Sent from my C5170 via Tapatalk 2