Rebirth of England

On March 11, 2011, a major earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale occurred in the eastern sea of ​​Japan. This is also the largest earthquake that has ever occurred in Japan.

This disaster triggered a massive tsunami that destroyed many cities on the eastern coast of Japan and killed 15,800 people.

What's more serious is that the earthquake caused the failure of two nuclear power plant reactors in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. Among them, one of the reactors at the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant experienced post-earthquake anomalies and caused nuclear steam to leak...

Barron didn't particularly care whether many places were starting to stock up on iodized salt again...

By this time, he had returned to Grace Lavender Manor in Australia.

A week later, on March 19, NATO began a large-scale air campaign against Libya.

On the same day, another big news was announced in the IT industry.

Motorola Mobility's board of directors has voted to accept an acquisition offer from a syndicate of IC Capital and GII Funds.

This also means that Motorola Mobility will be sold at a price of US$10.5 billion. This price is a premium of more than 45% relative to its stock price that was suspended before the acquisition!

This acquisition has attracted much attention. In addition to Motorola Mobility's popularity in the mobile phone industry, one of the acquirers, IC Capital, is also a wholly-owned shareholder of Android.

The Android system developed by Android is slightly ahead of Apple's iOS system and occupies the largest share of the smartphone market.

Many people believe that this acquisition, the large number of related patents owned by Motorola Mobility purchased by IC Capital at a high price, will enable the Android system and related mobile phone manufacturers to get rid of the patent lawsuits they are currently subject to, including Apple, Microsoft and other giants. This will clear the way for its subsequent development.

On the day the news was released, Ivanta TP, chairman of IC Capital, who led the acquisition, said that after the acquisition is completed, they will integrate Motorola Mobility’s existing business and ensure that Motorola, a brand with a glorious history, Continue to maintain its position in the mobile phone industry.

"We have no intention of merging Motorola Mobility into Android. As a mobile operating system development company, Android will continue to provide an open platform for all mobile phone manufacturers..."

In the TV camera, Ivanta said with a smile:

"Of course, the relevant patents owned by Motorola Mobility will also help Android companies and partner manufacturers enrich their patent library. In addition, we will also increase our investment in Motorola. Consumers can look forward to the launch of more new Motorola mobile phone models..."

In fact, the Motorola Mobility they acquired this time still had approximately US$2.5 billion on its books after the previous Motorola spin-off. In other words, the actual cost paid by IC Capital and GII Fund for this acquisition was 80 About US$1 billion.

At present, Motorola Mobility mainly includes two businesses: mobile phones and TV set-top boxes. The mobile phone business has been losing money in recent years, but the set-top box business can continue to make profits.

And Motorola Mobility is one of the two largest TV set-top box providers in the world. Its main competitor is Cisco subsidiary Scientific-Atlanta. Their set-top boxes are mainly used by cable TV companies to provide services to households.

But Barron knows that in the near future, the TV market will gradually transition to devices that deliver content over the Internet, and companies such as Apple, Microsoft Xbox and Google will all enter this field.

At the beginning, their plan was to sell their TV set-top box business after acquiring Motorola Mobility - for example, in Barron's previous life, Google sold its set-top box business after completing the acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Sold for more than $2 billion.

However, at that time, it was because Google itself had plans related to Google TV business, and was not very interested in the traditional cable TV set-top box business, and it conflicted with the direction of its own business. It was better to take advantage of Motorola Mobility's set-top box business. Sell ​​them separately when they are still profitable.

But Barron is different here. Whether it is in the traditional TV station field or the entertainment content field, he has richer content than Google.

For example, he can cooperate with SEM Group, Sinclair Group, Marvel-MGM Group, Netflix, DailyVedio and other businesses with the set-top box business.

Therefore, after completing the acquisition of Motorola Mobility, the set-top box business will be acquired and integrated with PUMA Electronics (set-top box sales in England and manufacturing industry in China) previously owned by Digital UK, and in addition to TV set-top boxes, In addition, it will also carry out research and development of network set-top boxes, and cooperate with O2 Telecom in North America and Europe to build home broadband networks, so as to enter this more emerging and promising market.

As for Motorola Mobility's mobile phone business, including their Motorola production base in Jinmen, China, and their R\u0026D center in Yanjing, they will continue to be retained.

But it will gradually reduce more than one-third of its offices in other regions, as well as its R\u0026D centers in Chicago and Sunnyvale, and most of its manufacturing plants outside China. The purpose is to reduce some operating expenses while maintaining the corresponding R\u0026D capabilities.

After all, Barron understands that in the future era of smartphones, the "playing method" is completely different from the previous one. Before this, many mobile phone brands may be able to launch several or even more than a dozen mobile phone models a year, but Apple phones, which only have one or two fixed models a year, still beat other mobile phone manufacturers.

Other mobile phone manufacturers also often launch one or two models in each low, medium and high grade.

In the field of low-end mobile phones, Motorola is destined to be unable to compete with Chinese domestic mobile phones in terms of cost, so what it should do most is to compete in the mid-to-high-end mobile phones like Samsung's strategy.

Therefore, after this, Motorola Mobility will focus on the development of Android phones and will only launch a small number of models each year. The primary purpose is to complete the turnaround of its mobile phone business from loss to profit. As for the increase in market share, it is also something that needs to be considered after surviving.

Motorola Mobility's mobile phone business will only retain the manufacturing plant in China, also for cost reduction considerations, and other manufacturing plants will be sold out one after another.

Even the manufacturing plants in China will be temporarily observed - Barron even considered adopting Apple's model, that is, no longer having its own mobile phone manufacturing plant, but only retaining design and development, as well as the supply chain of components, and handing over the assembly of the whole machine to the OEM factory.

This model will even reduce the cost of mobile phone products, making profits higher, or in other words, have more room for price competition...