In the Harvard Business Review and a 50-minute podcast, a deep dive into what it means

Horace Dediu

Horace Dediu -- the Harvard-trained analyst who writes the influential Asymco blog -- was studying the mobile phone market for Nokia (NOK) in 2005 when Google (GOOG) bought Android, primarily as a defense against the perceived threat that Microsoft (MSFT) was about to do to cellular telephony what it did to desktop computing.

The real threat, it turned out, was Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, which came along two years later from a different direction.

That's the context, Dediu maintains, in which to try to make sense of Google's proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility (MMI).

Dediue took a crack at making sense of the deal in two venues Tuesday -- in an article published by the Harvard Business Review and in a 50-minute "Critical Path" podcast on the 5by5 Network. Together, the two pieces constitute the deepest dive we've seen -- and we've seen plenty -- into the meaning of the $12.5 billion merger.

Dediu's conclusion: The deal doesn't make sense. Not as a pure patent play. Not as an entry into cell phone manufacturing. And not as a combination of the two.

"The big secret here," he concludes in his Critical Path piece, "is that I don't think Google knows what it wants to do yet."

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