To Microsoft: forget Yahoo! and buy Motorola's handset division

This post is inspired by this post. See this cartoon.

So Yahoo decides to play wait-and-see with Microsoft, rejecting the initial offer and waiting for US$40 per share. Meantime, the Redmond money men must be calculating if that amount of money is worth spending for a company with so many similar technology assets.

Here, I present, another acquisition option: Motorola! Well, it's handset division.

Moto's all but hinted that they've thrown in the towel in the mobile phone industry and are "exploring ways" to accelerate the recovery of its handset business. Most analysts are reading this as "please buy us out."

And so the names have been spun around - LG could chomp and instantly make itself number 3 in this market. So could Samsung or even Huawei. My take is... what about Microsoft?

Sure, Microsoft can make great devices. Witness the XBOX 360 and all the Microsoft Mice and Keyboards. But it can just as easily flop (Zune?). Purchasing Motorola would give MS a leg into the mobile space and put it smack dab into the centre of the convergence space - internet + computers + mobile.

Serious.

The one thing that Motorola has consistently been unable to get right has been its operating system. In fact, personally, I think the best Moto phones are those that ship with Windows Mobile 6, which (surprise surprise), is a Microsoft product.

Services is the other thing that Motorola haven't really communicated a gameplan on. Microsoft does services. Doesn't take a genius to put two-and-two together.

The only problem would be integrating a hardware division into Microsoft. But, it's not like this something that Microsoft hasn't gone and done before. Moto's handphone division could still continue operating independently whilst integration could take a step by step process.

The bottomline is, MS has money to spend. Yahoo's probably a fair acquisition. But, in my books, Motorola's handset business looks prime.

You don't want THIS at your press event...

This has got to be the nightmare of all PR people - especially the folks handling the invite to the Gizmodo folks!

There's this part in the video where this Motorola spokesperson actually is presenting about a pretty cool product and... the TV goes off! poof! It went off so fast the spokesperson didn't even know what was going on.



Still, I think CNet's reaction to this stunt pretty much sums it up. However, I think I can add that is probably an isolated incident in the blogging community and that the bloggers I've had for press events are nothing if not decent and interesting people.

Verdict? This is a one off. Good stunt for Gizmodo (more than 400 comments on the associated post) and nothing that should stop PR people from inviting bloggers again in the future.

Now, nobody get any ideas mmmkay?