Motorola

How Android came to dominate

Google's $12.5 billion bid to buy Motorola Mobility is likely to reshape the mobile industry. But a deal would have been unimaginable without the surging Android platform.

FORTUNE -- Google's proposed $12.5 billion acquisition of handset maker Motorola Mobility is a bid to protect itself from litigious competitors as well as to dramatically move its mobile business forward. But the search titan's biggest acquisition ever wouldn't even be imaginable if it MORE

Is Google buying Motorola for its 24,000 patents?

With one $12.5B deal it gets two weapons: a manufacturing arm and a rich IP portfolio

Google's (GOOG) announcement Monday that it has agreed to buy Motorola's recently spun off mobile devices business -- listed on NASDAQ as Motorola Mobility (MMI) -- for $12.5 billion could mean one of two things.

Either Google really wants to get into the Android manufacturing business -- putting it into direct competition primarily  with Apple (AAPL), MORE

Put on your 5-D glasses!

Visualize four years of mobile phone warfare through Asymco's snake-like bubble charts

Horace Dediu, who has been pushing the envelope of data visualization for more than two years, has outdone himself with the interactive chart he posted on his Asymco.com blog Sunday afternoon.

Most conventional graphs display data over just two axes, X and Y. If you want to see how the data in those dimensions change over time, you end up having to draw a MORE

Samsung's Android vs. Apple's iPhone

The sharp rise of one of Apple's frenemies triggers a fierce debate about what it means

Some of the most intelligent conversations on the Internet these days are to be found in the comment stream of Horace Dediu's Asymco blog. Not only does Dediu produce striking charts and graphs from his analysis of the mobile phone market, but he carefully moderates the subsequent discussion, pruning repetitive comments and chasing out the MORE

How Apple is sucking the profit out of the mobile phone market

The iPhone last quarter took in 5.6% of unit sales and 66.3% of the profit

Some readers complained when we ran a similar headline almost a year ago, accompanied by the bottom chart at right.

At the time, Apple (AAPL) had a 3% share of the global mobile phone market but was taking 39% of the profit -- a situation that didn't seem to bode well for its competitors.

Since then, the imbalance MORE

'Apple will push its legal claims hard and unrelentingly'

The payoff should Apple prevail in the patent wars: an estimated $30 billion

In a note to clients issued Thursday, Bernstein's Toni Sacconaghi takes a hard look at the flurry of patent lawsuits Apple (AAPL) has launched against the manufacturers of Google (GOOG) Android phones.

All in all, he likes Apple's chances. The two key bullet points (we quote):

We anticipate that Apple will push its legal claims hard and unrelentingly and believe MORE

Asymco: Apple could buy the mobile phone industry

It could, in theory, acquire every cellphone vendor except Samsung with cash alone

Asymco's Horace Dediu has been tracking Apple's (AAPL) growing liquid assets and the shrinking valuations of its mobile competitors, and he estimates that they soon will cross.

Apple's third fiscal quarter closes next week, and when it does, Dediu is pretty sure that Apple will have amassed more than $70 billion in cash, cash equivalents, short-term marketable securities and MORE

Nokia patent settlement a 'sweet defeat' for Apple

Having overpowered the iPhone's design patents, Nokia likely now to go after Android

The settlement of its epic 20-month patent dispute with Apple (AAPL) that Nokia (NOK) announced early Tuesday could spell trouble for the makers of Android phones.

There's no question Apple lost the legal battle that pitted its significant intellectual property holdings against Nokia's even deeper patent portfolio. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but they require MORE

The iPhone in Q1: 5% of unit sales, 55% of global profits

Visualizing Apple's share of the worldwide mobile phone market in the first quarter of 2011

On Monday, we reproduced a pair of charts from Asymco's Horace Dediu showing how Apple (AAPL) overtook Nokia (NOK) in less than four years to become the world's No. 1 maker of mobile phones -- smart or otherwise -- in terms of revenue. See here.

In the charts at right, which Dediu posted Tuesday, he takes two MORE

Apple's iPhone: No. 4 in global sales, No. 1 in revenue

A tale of two charts

Apple (AAPL) overtook Nokia (NOK) last quarter to become the world's No. 1 vender of mobile phones -- smart or otherwise -- in terms of revenue. In terms of sales, it still has a lot of room for growth.

These charts are from a series Asymco's Horace Dediu began publishing last week as part of an analysis of the global mobile phone market for the first calendar MORE