

Google to close Motorola smartphone factory in Texas - oori
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27643474

======
_wmd
Woah, talk about fickle..

    
    
        The future of manufacturing is going to be standard platforms with high
        customization around them. Common components and then customized wrappings,
        if you will. The reason is that consumers are pretty sophisticated and want
        their own thing but you can't build a phone for each and every person
        that's different. It's very difficult to achieve that…with a supply chain
        that's in Asia, even with modern jets. It has as much to do with time zones
        and culture and language. There's reasons why in a (creative)
        hyper-competitive industry you're going to end up with advanced
        manufacturing in the U.S. And this is a trend that we're beginning to see
        in many industries
    

— Eric Schmidt, 2013-08-02
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2013/08/01...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2013/08/01/eric-
schmidt-dennis-woodside-on-making-motox-in-us/2609785/)

~~~
psbp
You realize that Motorola has been sold to Lenovo, an asian company?

~~~
_wmd
Yes thank you, I was reminded by the 4th sentence of the article. If you
continue reading all the way to the 5th sentence, you'll discover that deal
has not yet been finalized.

~~~
psbp
I doubt Lenovo would appreciate a contract in a market they're not necessarily
interested in pursuing.

~~~
eloisant
Lenovo definitely wants the brand recognition and distribution network of
Motorola in US, but I don't see why they would want to keep the factory there.

------
spinchange
It's been reported that Google senior management was never really committed to
Motorola or the handset business[1]. The fact they took so long to launch a
new flagship product (after first trying to use the IP arsenal against Apple
while simultaneously winding down much of Motorola's other lines and
businesses) and then selling the company mere months after the launch of it,
seem to back this up circumstantially.

I will say this, The Moto X is a really solid product. The smart display,
speech recognition capabilities and Moto Assist make it one of the nicest
Android phones I've ever used for practical purposes. The Moto G and Moto E
look to be really solid values as well.

The bad thing about this kind of corporate maneuvering here in the states is
it makes the "American-made" angle they were playing for PR & political
purposes seem manipulated and cynical. Maybe that's just not that important to
most people though. I'm sure it was important to the people working there.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/motorolas-super-powered-
googl...](http://www.businessinsider.com/motorolas-super-powered-google-
phone-2014-3)

~~~
rdtsc
I got a Moto G and I really like it.

It was cheap enough that if it broke, I wouldn't be too upset. My rule is if I
have to get insurance or if I am afraid of breaking it too much, then I can't
afford it, and Moto G was in that range.

I've had it for about half a year. At no point in this time period, for
example, have I thought "Gee I wish I had something more powerful". Granted
this is the most powerful phone I've had, so maybe if I handled an iPhone I
would be blown away, but so far so good, I am very happy with it.

~~~
dm2
Motorola still sells great phones. Android doesn't have high system
requirements and computing power has dramatically increased, become cheaper,
and more energy efficient in the past few years, it's not too difficult to
build a long-lasting and great phones anymore, which is bad for phone
manufacturers because they rely on people purchasing phones frequently.

Even though I'm very tempted to purchase a Moto G or E I can't help but to
stick to the Nexus phones though. If HTC or Motorola would just sell phones
without custom software and pre-installed applications and would have a 3 year
update policy, only then would I purchase from them.

I have no problems installing custom ROMs to keep a phone up-to-date but I
really shouldn't have to.

~~~
blue6249
While this isn't a guarantee that you'll get updates, you can definitely get a
moto g (and a pile of other phones) without any carrier customization now as a
"play edition" phone[1].

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/devices/details/Moto_G_Google_...](https://play.google.com/store/devices/details/Moto_G_Google_Play_edition_16GB?id=moto_g_16gb)

~~~
dm2
It's great to see Google doing these Play editions, I didn't realize that it
was available for so many devices.
[https://play.google.com/store/devices/collection/promotion_5...](https://play.google.com/store/devices/collection/promotion_50000c5_partner_us)

I'm going to get a Moto G, I was considering it a few days ago even though I
don't really need a new phone (Nexus 4 has been dropped, thrown, and ran over
a few times, put a screen protector on to hold the glass in place).

------
owenwil
Is it Google closing this, or Lenovo, now that the sale has completed? It
seems to me that the agenda has changed now that it's changed hands.

~~~
IBM
The deal will close later this year according to the WSJ. It's still owned by
Google.

~~~
the_ancient
Which probably means Lenovo has no interest in buying the factory and Google
will have no use for it after the sale

------
oori
Google's Motorola Mobility has said it will close its Fort Worth, Texas
factory after its Moto X smartphone failed to appeal to consumers.

The facility - which is the only smartphone factory in the US - opened in May
of last year.

At its peak, the factory employed 3,800 people, although now only 700 workers
remain.

~~~
pyre
It's only been open a year and is already down to 700 workers from a peak of
3800?

~~~
higherpurpose
Maybe most of the original ones were contractors.

~~~
pasbesoin
Having read about this in a Fort Worth paper, apparently most of the current
"employees" are contractors. I gained the impression that this was always the
case.

P.S. Meaning, people employed by a third-party contracting company. You know
the drill...

------
scragg
Moto X is a good phone. It was a huge disappointment when I heard about the
price at launch. It could not compete on price with the Nexus line. Add that
to the fact only AT&T customers get the moto customizer. Too bad, I live
within a few miles of the factory.

~~~
jug6ernaut
> It was a huge disappointment when I heard about the price at launch. It
> could not compete on price with the Nexus line.

Sigh. The nexus line is sold AT COST. If you expected a retail phone to
compete against a phone that is not trying to make any money you will always
be disappointed.

~~~
jonathansizz
Well, the Moto X and the Nexus 5 are now indeed the same price.

Motorola did have several major glitches with the Moto X launch: price too
high, quality control issues at the assembly plant, mediocre camera software,
customization limited to AT&T contracts.

By the time they'd fixed those problems, they'd missed the boat. I bought my
Moto X a few weeks ago and it's the best phone I've ever seen, but all the
buzz has moved elsewhere.

I hope for their sake that Motorola get the launch of the forthcoming X+1
right, because they make a very strong line of phones and I'd love to see them
succeed.

------
ZeroGravitas
It's not really a smartphone factory though is it? It just assembles the
custom casings.

------
bobbles
Maybe if they wanted the launch to be a success they should've opened it up to
more than one country and more than one carrier

------
gdewilde
Technically users have a ton of influence on products but it doesn't seem very
organized. Websites are usually limited to product information but it
shouldn't be to hard to expand the info with production locations, political
situation and wages. Profit distribution tells me a lot about a product. To
support billionaires paying the lowest wages in the world could just be weird
enough that one doesn't want to have any part in it.

I think a cool technical solution would be to increase the prices by an abuse
scaled donation to a relevant aid organization. That way the end user doesn't
have to investigate all the ins and outs of the geopolitical circus.

Comparing features is already hard enough.

------
gonzo
"Don't be evil."

~~~
beaner
What is evil about this?

~~~
hosay123
Perhaps it would be better to ask an employee who 8 months ago may have
started a family on the strength of a loud endorsement to move manufacturing
back home. What's the real harm? Just a few empty promises, no laws broken and
a mere 700 dashed spirits, but it's all worthwhile in pursuit of the dream -
whatever it happens to be this quarter.

~~~
DannyBee
So they should do what the army does, and spend billions to produce tanks that
end up somewhere in the desert because the army doesn't want them, and it may
cause some job loss?

~~~
hosay123
Of course not, that wouldn't be _good business_ , but we're not concerned with
that here. The parent comment asks what is _evil_ about it, which is to ask
whether it is _moral_ to spend millions on an advertising campaign that
implies job security, and less than a year later turn those same jobs into a
fire sale.

There is a huge continuum of possibilities for how the Motorola sale should
play out, but when the reality is an extremely profitable corporation pulling
the rug from under 700 low wage contractors with minimal notice, despite
explicitly claiming the contrary less than a year previous, just setting fire
to the building and walking away somehow strikes me as a particularly immoral
outcome.

~~~
tptacek
So they should instead do what?

~~~
spinchange
It's too late to do anything about it now, but I also think it was in kind of
in bad faith for Google management to play up this whole Motorola enterprise
as "bringing back tech manufacturing jobs to the U.S." and Texas specifically
with big press events replete with politicians and all of that stuff.

Business is business and perhaps folks who were encouraged by that kind of
dog-and-pony show are rubes anyhow, but it feels very "un-Googly" for them to
have gone that route PR-wise if they weren't seriously committed to it and
it's pretty clear they weren't.

~~~
tptacek
If Google had done nothing, would those jobs likely have remained in the US?
If not, what is the complaint here?

~~~
spinchange
The complaint is simply that Google repeatedly and intentionally signaled a
big public commitment to creating tech manufacturing jobs and selling
American-made cell phones and this couldn't have been their actual intention.

There's nothing else to do or say, really. Rightly or wrongly Google has an
image of being different than most politicians and corporations and so that's
why people are disappointed. I get why they did what they did, I just don't
think they needed the political, PR head fake.

~~~
tptacek
Isn't the obvious interpretation of what happened here that Google wanted to
create tech manufacturing jobs in the US, spent an enormous amount of money
trying to create tech manufacturing jobs in the US, and simply failed?

And, that being the case, it's very relevant to ask "what would have happened
had Google not tried to do this?". From what I can tell, the answer is "those
people who are losing their jobs due to this plant closure would have lost
those jobs earlier."

~~~
spinchange
Having closely followed the activities of Motorola and what Google's been
doing with it post-acquisition, it's (now) obvious to me they were always
trying to safely unwind it & protect the rest of their hardware partners[1].
The upside that they were hoping for was that the IP portfolio would be a good
defensive weapon against Apple instead of an offensive one against other
Android ODMs, but that didn't pan out. They were never expecting to be a major
ODM themselves for the long haul.

You're right that the contractors working at that facility may have gotten
their walking papers earlier had Google had not come around post-Nokia (it was
a most recently a Nokia plant - not a Motorola one, IIRC), so there is that to
be said.

Again, my complaint is that it's just terrible optics for Schmidt et. al, to
have signaled a _commitment_ to growing U.S. manufacturing and then sold this
enterprise not 2 full quarters from tepid launch of a toned-down flagship that
didn't even get full support from the parent company's management.[2]

Additionally, Google did not really spend an "enormous" amount of money
creating tech manufacturing jobs. They shrunk Motorola and phased out numerous
lines and support for them and released thousands of Mobility workers before
even launching the Moto X.

Yes, this might have happened anyway, but it's not like they were trying to
grow the business organically. They were winding it down (and getting it ready
for sale) while talking about growing it.

They were also able to take advantage of Motorola's losses to offset their own
corporate tax liability and I'm sure they got manufacturing credits in Texas
on that plant, which is why they had Gov. Rick Perry and all the cameras there
and played up the whole "bringing back jobs" angle even though they were all
temporary contractors.

[1] [http://www.unwiredview.com/2011/08/11/motorolas-sanjay-
jha-o...](http://www.unwiredview.com/2011/08/11/motorolas-sanjay-jha-openly-
admits-they-plan-to-collect-ip-royalties-from-other-android-makers/)

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/motorolas-super-powered-
googl...](http://www.businessinsider.com/motorolas-super-powered-google-
phone-2014-3)

