Last week, Google announced that it had reached an agreement to sell Motorola's handset division to Lenovo for $2.91 billion. As with last month's Nest acquisition, this led to a range of reactions from industry observers. Let's take a look at the rationale driving this deal.

In my post on smartphone segmentation by usage, I had hypothesized that the smartphone market was segmenting around use cases rather than price points. Smartphones with larger screen sizes (or phablets) were a better fit for use cases focused on pocketable computing, while devices with smaller screens were better suited for communication use cases. NPD's research on data/app usage by screen size seems to confirm my hypothesis.

With Android 4.4, Google has been attempting to lower hardware requirements and eliminate the need for using older Android versions on low end devices. Interestingly, Android 4.4 also ships without the AOSP browser app. Let's take a look at Google's motivations for this move.

In my last post on the "profit share" trap, I had explained the natural evolution of the smartphone industry. In this post, I will be exploring the two primary market segments shaping the short to medium term growth prospects of smartphone OEMs. As per my definition, segmentation is not based on platform, but by usage patterns.

Over the past few days, there has been a lot of noise in the tech media about the supremacy of "profit share" over "market share", specifically related to Apple's performance in the smartphone market (but it can be extended to Samsung as well). Most proponents of this argument seem to fundamentally misunderstand the long-term relevance of the "profit share" metric. Let's make a more educated comparison between the two metrics to understand how each can be used to analyze the smartphone industry.

Microsoft announced their fiscal Q3 (calendar Q1) results last week, and the figures were surprisingly stable given the steep decline in PC shipments this quarter. Microsoft announced Q3 revenue of $20.49 billion and an operating income of $7.61 billion. The Windows division revenue was flat sequentially, at $5.7 billion. However, a deeper look at the numbers show some worrying signs.

Microsoft has decided to cut Windows 8 license fees to OEMs, in an attempt to lower prices and boost lackluster demand for Windows 8 devices. The $20 discount will apply only to 11.6" and below touchscreen devices. For devices below 10.8", Microsoft will also offer free copies of Office 2013.

IDC recently released their global smartphone shipment figures and the list of top five vendors looks very different from what an industry watcher may have been used to. While Samsung and Apple have retained their industry leading positions, RIM, HTC & Nokia no longer make the list and have been overtaken by Sony, ZTE & Huawei. Let's take a look at the drivers of success & failure in this market.

My post on Windows 8's pre-launch metrics suggested that the platform would see poor demand in the market and now, early reports seem to concur with that prediction. According to a report from Paul Thurrott, sales of Windows 8 based devices are far below Microsoft's expectations. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft has taken to blaming OEMs for their failure.

When Microsoft announced their intentions to be a "devices and services" company, I stated that it could pose a risk to their OEM relationships. With the Surface RT launch behind us, it looks like the Windows RT platform could be the first victim.

According to a report from Engadget, Microsoft may be planning to price the Microsoft Surface RT tablet at just $199. I had previously stated that the pricing & OEM impact would be two of the largest challenges facing Microsoft with the Surface launch. Let's take a look at how this pricing strategy affects those and the potential impact it could have on the market.

In an interview with the Telegraph, RIM's CEO, Thorsten Heins, has stated that RIM may look to license the Blackberry 10 platform to larger OEMs. While this signals that RIM may finally be ready to face market realities, this strategy may not be as easy to execute, as it seems.