When Google acquired Motorola—the first news shocker of August—it insisted that its other Android partners were "very enthusiastic" about the deal.
After all, Google framed the deal as a genius patents-arming strategy that would protect all Android manufacturers. But will Google give Motorola some sort of a competitive edge in exchange for its 17,000 patents?
"We did it for more than just patents," Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, said at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco on Thursday. "We actually believe that the Motorola team has some amazing products coming...We're excited to have the product line, to use the Motorola brand, the product architecture, the engineers. These guys invented the RAZR. We know them well because they're Google Apps users….[We like] having at least one area where we can do integrated hardware and software," Schmidt reportedly said.
A recent report found that Android is used by 40 percent of all U.S. smartphone owners. As a result, many analysts felt that Motorola rivals like HTC wouldn't ditch Android after the Google deal because the platform was too lucrative.
"Samsung HTC LG SEMC might be unhappy about Google/Moto but not much they can do when their smartphones sales are so dependent" on Android, Gartner research vice president Carolina Milanesi tweeted when the announcement was first made.
Later on his session, Schmidt referred to the other August news shocker, Steve Jobs resignation, by singing the former CEO's praises.
Schmidt told Salesforce.com's CEO, Marc Benioff, that Jobs was the best CEO in the last 50 or maybe 100 years, according to Michael Miller, editor of PCMag's sister blog, Forward Thinking.
Miller said it was unclear whether he was referring to Jobs' two stints at Apple, or to Apple and Pixar.
Schmidt wasn't speaking as a distant observer; he sat on the board of Apple until 2009, when the burgeoning Android forced him to step down for conflict of interest reasons.
For more, see Google Acquires Motorola Mobility: What You Need to Know, as well as Google's Motorola Deal Closes a Door, Opens for Windows, and Why Google is Buying Motorola Mobility.