While HTC, Samsung and LG have expressed their warm and fuzzy feeling about Google-Motorola deal, Micromax had made a not so subtle statement. Micromax has echoed the broader sentiment of the market about the deal. While defending Android is good, pampering Motorola would be bad for the vendors. This is the fear of many and Micromax had laid it out without any verbal gymnastics.
Micromax’s executive director, Rahul Sharma made this statement :
“I believe Google will keep a level playing field…if they don’t…a lot of people will start hedging against Microsoft,” Total Tele
Now that Google has gone the Apple route, Microsoft is the only software maker which doesn’t yet have any hardware interests. And this can act to Microsoft’s advantage because HTC and Samsung wouldn’t care much for what their smartphones run on as long as there are buyers for them.
What options does Micromax have?
HTC and Samsung are the big guns with deep pockets and have the muscle to move away from Android or so the thinking goes. Does Micromax have the same options? Micromax sells three Android models and all three of them are priced in the sub-$200K range with its cheapest Android mobile costing $120. One of the reason why the devices are priced low is because Android is free. With such low costs and probably low margins, can Micromax move away from ‘free’ Android to Microsoft and pay royalties? That’s an important decision to make because 15% of Micromax’s sales are from Android devices.
Micromax in particular is not selling cutting edge Android devices like Samsung. Not yet. Even if Motorola gets an early build of Ice Cream Sandwich or other future software revisions, Micromax has hardly anything to worry about.
2 Comments
Abhisek Mukherjee
Quite odd IMHO since Micromax dosen't provide any ADB drivers for its flagship A70 model, nor does they opt to update A70 to gingerbread. If at least they open up the source/drivers, other people can help them up! It's open source anyway. Since they do not keep the openness themselves, the whole comment is baseless.
At least first try to give the "openness" their real form, do provide some drivers, sources or updates & then comment back on other companies.
Mux
As long as they dont sell in the US/EU/Australia, they dont have to pay anyone anything for patents anyways… wat r u talkin abt..