This week, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer took part in a conference call hosted by Gleacher & Company, an investment firm. No surprises here: someone asked Oppenheimer what Apple thought of the $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google.
Oppenheimer’s response? Classically understated. “$12.5 billion is a lot of money.”
You should probably read “too much money” into that statement for Apple’s snide opinion on the matter.
Questioned on the matter father, Oppenheimer said that Apple believes in competition, but that companies must invent their own technology rather than steal or borrow the ideas of others. He said that the open market would eventually settle what was the superior product.
Translation? Google overpaid for Motorola because it needed to protect itself from litigation based upon stealing all of Apple’s ideas, and Jobs and Co. are mostly bemused by it, especially since those patents haven’t stopped Apple from suing the pants off of Motorola before. Moving on!
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
37 responses to “Apple: “$12.5B Is A Lot Of Money” for Google To Spend On Motorola”
“Questioned on the matter…” are your writing to your priest or was he being asked more about it?
Please COM, it’s getting worse.
If you still don’t know the word you were grasping for is ‘further’. Furthermore the line should read “when questioned further on the matter”
Made quite the leap there – all the guy said was “$12.5 billion is a lot of money.”Â
How did you expect him to answer that question?
Of course Apple and Microsoft will come out and praise Google for buying Motorola up!
You’re competitor won’t come out and say that you do something good.  And of course, Apple and Microsoft dosen’t like this because Google has (more) patents to defend themselves.  Now it more difficult to go against Google.
“Questioned on the matter father, Oppenheimer said that Apple believes in competition, but that companies must invent their own technology rather than steal or borrow the ideas of others. He said that the open market would eventually settle what was the superior product.
Translation? Google overpaid for Motorola because it needed to protect itself from litigation based upon stealing all of Apple’s ideas, and Jobs and Co. are mostly bemused by it, especially since those patents haven’t stopped Apple from suing the pants off of Motorola before. Moving on!””Companies must invent their own technology”
So, why did Apple plopped down several billions of dollars on the Nortel patents then?
 And why is it rumored that they are out shopping for more patents as well?
It’s the pot calling the kettle black.
“He’s copying me! He’s copying me! He’s copying me!” As they copied or in the process of copying.
Everybody copies. Everybody steals. Â Apple is as guilty (or as innocent) as the rest.
Children on the playground. Children on the playground. It’s just children on the playground. They complain what the other is doing, and then go around and does the exactly the same thing.
“Questioned on the matter father, Oppenheimer…”
Mr. Brownlee, are you speaking to your own father with this article, or is Oppenheimer now a Catholic Priest?
I just paĂd $20.87 for an ĂPad 2.64GB and my boyfriend loves his PanasonĂc
LumĂx GF 1 Camera that we got for $38.76 there arriving tomorrow by UP S.I
will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially when I
also sold a 40 inch L E D T V to my boss for $657 which only cost me $62.81 to
buy.
Here is the website we use to get it all from, http://to.ly/aXoC
Presumably, the patent war is about “if you sue me for violating your patents then I’ll sue you for violating mine”. Â Sounds good, threaten tit for tat and reach some kind of peace through deterrence. Â But then you and Google are making the jump to saying “well if I have more patents then I can threaten you with more suits and protect myself more, so I’m just going to go out and buy as many patents as I can!”. Â The conclusion doesn’t necessarily follow the premise. Â It’s not the number of patents you have but the number of patents that you can argue is being violated by the competition.
Everybody copies and everybody steals. Â But some are smarter about copying and copy only that which doesn’t have a strong patent to protect it. Â Google has always been cavalier about respecting intellectual property. Â It’s whole business is premised on free access to others’ intellectual property and it thought Apple would just roll over like its other IP theft victims. Â Big mistake. Big $12.5 billion mistake.
I agree with this and also with the assessment. Buying dead technology for 12 Billion won’t help Google top the smartphone market as in the end, folks will realize that quality and quantity are two independent parameters. Andriod fanboys can pound me —>>> HERE.Â
Motorola hasn’t had a viable handset in years, so the purchase baffled me until I realized that Google also bought Motorola’s STB business in the deal. Â It makes more sense to me that Google (having flopped with GoogleTV) is making a move towards video delivery rather than buying a mediocre mobile phone line. Â Curious about whether the deal included a couple hundred million for ongoing litigation between Motorola and TiVo regarding DVR patents…
I am guessing typo that was supposed to say….
“Questioned on the matter further, Oppenheimer…”
tinyurl.com/2df4ccp
I am well aware of it being a typo. Â My pointed sarcasm stems from the fact that neither Mr. Brownlee nor CultofMac have cared to fix the spelling. Â Furthermore, Cult of Mac is quite notorious for their bad spelling and grammar, which is insulting to anyone who cares much about the English language. Â There was a day that most people considered such “totally unacceptable,” but today many people let it slide and the media now kicks out articles without any proof-reading. Â It’s quite sad.
I just p a i d $21.87 for an i P a d 2-64GB and my boyfriend loves his Panasonîc Lumîx GF 1 Camera that we got for $38.76 there arriving tomorrow by UPS.I will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 40 inch LED TV to my boss for $657 which only cost me $62.81 to buy.
Here is the website we use to get it all from,http://bit.ly/PennyOrder
tinyurl.com/2df4ccp
tinyurl.com/2a7usxg
I’m not an Android Fan, thus I won’t pound you. ;)
So let’s make sure
we’re on the same playing field here… Yup, $ 12.5 BILLION is a lot of
money… BUT.. IF you want to put that in perspective in terms of Apple,
reports say that they just up’d their order for iPhone’s for the rest
of the year to 56 MILLION units… Let’s say if the BOM “cost ” of the
iPhone is $325, then the value of that order alone is over $ 18
BILLION… so everything is relative….
tinyurl.com/2df4ccp
It’s funny reading so many negative posts on this site when everyone else is posting that Motorola’s Patent profile is worth over 12.5 billion on its own.Â
They just got a mobile phone company for free.Â
…because taking a different position than the established consensus is…bad…?
Independent thinking requires daring to break from the norm; something all too many are loathe to do.
tinyurl.com/2df4ccp
Google stealing or borrowing ideas… Isn’t that like the kettle calling the pot black.
Apple copied the iPod from Kane Kramer, copied the MacOS “dock” from Acorn computers, Was sued by Burst.com and settled for the technology used in the iPod and iTunes, copied the iPhone from LG Prada, NeoNode, and Samsung F700, copied parts of iOS (like swipe to unlock etc) from NeoNode, Sued by Nokia and settled for patents related to GSM and UMTS standards as well as 802.11 WiFi technologies, Sued by Cisco and settled for using the “iPhone” name, copied the Finder icon from a Picasso painting titled “Two Characters”, copied the App Store from Jailbreak/Cydia, Sued by Personal Audio and lost for patents related to playlist implementation on the iPod. Personal Audio was awarded $8 million. Was sued by Mirror Worlds and lost for patents related to Cover Flow, Time Machine, and Spotlight features found in Mac OS X and iOS. Apple was ordered to pay $625.5 million to Mirror Worlds. And copied Android features that include Notifications, Wireless syncing, Tabbed browsing, New split keyboard, Open apps from the lock screen, and Over the air updates.Â
It is a opinion of the competitor, so i think the criticism must be heard by the Google and evaluate the worth of getting the Motorola Mobility into it’s hands.
Thanks for the mention Â