Google-China spat may hurt Motorola
By siliconindia   |   Friday, 22 January 2010, 15:09 IST   |    3 Comments
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Google-China spat may hurt Motorola
New York: Cellphone maker Motorola that has bet its turnaround on Google's Android and China could face a hurdle now as Google threatens to exit China. This move by the search engine giant may also open new opportunities for other cellphone majors like Nokia and Apple to increase their sales and Microsoft to gain more ground in web search in the world's most populous country, reports Reuters. Recently, Google said that it has postponed the launch of two phones made by Motorola and Samsung running the Android software. This move came following Google's allegations that it was the target of cyber-spying in the country and that the company would no longer accept censoring search results on the Chinese google.cn search site. Many analysts say a Google China exit may hurt sales of Android phones, which are also being built by several Chinese firms including ZTE Corporation and Huawei. Motorola, which is banking on Android to revitalize a flagging cellphone unit, could be hurt the most. "Motorola has made China and the U.S. the two markets it's focusing most closely on, and it's placed a big bet on Android," said Current Analysis Analyst Avi Greengart. Morgan Stanley Analyst Ehud Gelblum wrote in a research note that he was cutting his current quarter estimates for Motorola's Android phone sales by half a million to 1.5 million due to uncertainty around its ability to ship phones in China.

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