Upcoming Phones

Google CEO Larry Page has just announced that the company has at last completed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility, which has been in the works for around 9 months now. Originally announced in August of last year, Google had plenty of regulatory approval hurdles in its way before it could finalize the move; but with the approval of the acquisition coming from China a few days ago, the company was finally able to seal the deal. Motorola Mobility has now been acquired by Google for $12.5 billion, meaning that the company paid $40 per share.

So, now that the deal has been closed, what’s happening now? Well, effective immediately, Motorola Mobility is no longer trading on the NYSE. Sanjay Jha – credited by Page as someone who made a big bet on Android early on – has stepped down, with Google employee Dennis Woodside taking over as the new CEO. Page praised his work at Google, stating that he had worked throughout the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Russia to expand Google’s business there. He also more recently helped to grow revenue in the U.S. from $10.8 billion to $17.5 billion.

Now, I wonder what’s in store for the company in the coming months and years, though; there have been rumors of post-acquisition layoffs, as Google trims down the company down to something that it would like to work with.

They certainly seem pretty enthusiastic about the acquisition, with Page remarking back in August that this move will help to supercharge the Android ecosystem (reassuring everyone, however, that this doesn’t mean that Google will stop working with other Android hardware manufacturers.) But what was the point of shelling out $12.5 billion to acquire a mobile hardware manufacturer for a platform that Google licenses out to everyone anyways? Considering that Google has been a victim of patent wars fought by Apple and Microsoft, the company did state that they wanted Motorola Mobility’s established repository of patents to defend Android against litigation from competitors’ “anti-competitive” litigation.

Thus, Google felt that this acquisition was actually a pro-competitive move to help defend its platform against all of the recent litigation. Google’s relationship with Motorola Mobility moving forward versus that with other manufacturers should be interesting to see as well, on top of what public perception of that relationship will be. Microsoft and Nokia are two very close companies, and some already regard them as the best manufacturer to go with when it comes to Windows Phone partially for that reason.

LTE arrives on the iPhone. With Apple making LTE available for iPhone 5s in the Philippines, I think it is safe to say that the LTE age has arrived. Getting LTE on your postpaid smart iPhone is as easy as applying the latest iOS 6.1 update. Your unlimited data plan, become a unlimited LTE data plan. No word from Globe, but I was told during Globe iPhone launch that Globe iPhone data plans would also automatically become LTE data plans.

With the Apple iPhone now having LTE, this now gives you a wider choice on LTE handsets since you now have both iOS and Android options. The Apple iPhone 5 joins the Huawei Ascent P1, Sony Ericsson Xperia V and  ZTE T82 as the Philippines first LTE capable phones.

Why place so much emphasize on LTE support for the iPhone 5? When it comes down to the mobile handsets that have the consumers mind share, it really comes down to three models: the Apple iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II. For so long as all three handsets in the Philippines did not have LTE, phones with LTE were largely ignored.

Now that the Apple iPhone 5 has LTE active, it truly becomes a cutting edge handset, which will have an incremental upgrade later this year. No matter how much you like the large beautiful Super AMOLED displays and quad core processors on the Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II, they feel like last years handsets soon to be replaced by a LTE capable model, or by a whole new model all-together.

0.4-inches from greatness. The other beneficiary of LTE arriving on the is the Sony Xperia V, which is an excellent smartphone. The problem with the Xperia V is that it came with a 4.3-inch display when the Android standard for a flagship phone was a 4.7-inch or larger screen. With the Apple iPhone 5 toting LTE, the Sony Xperia V becomes its only equivalent competitor. LTE will allow the Sony Xperia V to arise from the large shadow cast by Samsungs Galaxys.

Carrier wars. The Apple iPhone 5 will bring greater public awareness of what LTE is, than all of the marketing that Smart and Globe have poured in for the past one and a half years. With greater public awareness, the fight for which is the best network will focus on which network has the wider LTE coverage.

Rappler has a updated list of Globe Telecom LTE locations and has confirmed download speeds as fast as 35 Mbps:

With the LTE era having began, it looks like Globe and Samsung are caught playing catchup.