Nearpoints

Craig Mathias

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Motorola - You Win Some, You Lose Some

By Craig Mathias on Thu, 02/26/09 - 8:22am.

I am a huge fan of Motorola, perhaps because we owe so much to this company for so many innovations in wireless over the years. I've always found Motorola products to be solid, their marketing people informed and helpful, and the company pervasive and influential even when not the leader in a given case. There's no denying they've run into problems in recent years (but, then, who hasn't?); many assert that the lack of a good follow-on to the Razr was to blame; that's a little simplistic, but increasingly-aggressive competition and the overall macroeconomic picture certainly haven't helped. As I've said before, Motorola is the only company in wireless that really covers it all - unlicensed, licensed, government, infrastructure, software, and, all the time, with a spirit of innovation that provides real value to customers.

A good example of this is their announcement this week of what they're calling Advanced Troubleshooting and SMART RF for wireless LANs. These capabilities come from their AirDefense unit, and basically enable centralized management/help desk staff to deal with the most common WLAN connectivity issues quickly and efficiently, minimizing operating cost and maximizing productivity, rather than losing it to frustrating downtime. And these are vendor-independent tools, not necessarily tied to Motorola's own WLAN systems. That's an interesting marketing approach that will broaden the appeal of these products while minimizing the impact of potential competition.

On the other hand, Motorola also announced the sale of their Good Technology mobile-messaging unit to competitor Visto, weakening their position in this space but, as they say, increasing the focus on core businesses where they can truly lead. Think of this functionality as a vendor-independent BlackBerry Enterprise Server plus a bit more, and you can see how potentially valuable it is. This is a big win for Visto, who already had staked out a prominent position in this space.

And, finally, a key patent that they got from the acquisition of data-collection and wireless-LAN pioneer Symbol Technologies has been (preliminarily but essentially) thrown out, or so we're told by competitor Aruba Networks, who were sued over alleged infringement of said patent. We often remind clients that assaulting competitors with patent litigation is usually foolish at best (barring clear evidence that your basic lay juror could grasp without benefit of coffee), and that patents are best used to enhance credibility and to have something to trade should one be sued and that claim deemed to be valid. But patents are most certainly not barriers to entry anymore, and, when litigation backfires, the results can be embarrassing at best. Far too many overly-broad patents covering ideas rather than specific implementations have been approved in recent years, calling into question the very legitimacy of the entire US patent process. If ever there were a function of government so clearly in need of reform, this is it.

And, did I mention, Aruba countersued for infringement of two of their patents. The saga continues, and the lawyers (and perhaps only the lawyers) get richer.