Samsung Google Divorce?

With the recent sale of the remnants of Motorola Mobility to Lenovo Google has managed to at least salvage something from its expensive mistake. That is Google and Samsung kissing and making up with the recent cross patent licensing deal signed between the two companies.

While there has been talk of a Samsung-Google divorce in the past, it came to a head at the recent CES 2014 where Samsung unveiled its “Magazine UX” interface. Which is at the very least is a departure from Samsung’s Touchwiz (which seems to be permanently stuck looking like Android Gingerbread). And at the very worst, a major divergence from Google’s blessed vanilla version of Android

However with this latest deal Google has managed to extend an olive branch to Samsung and as result the company will dial back its Android tweaks and return to a more vanilla offering. Ben Thompson also makes an interesting point about the deal observing:

While Re/code attempted to paint the latter deal as some sort of intimidation on Google’s part, it seems obvious that the reason Google “won” both of these deals was Motorola: specifically, Google likely offered to get out of hardware if Samsung cross-licensed their patents and stopped pseudo-forking Android. Given Samsung’s dominant position in the Android ecosystem, the Motorola bargaining chip very well may have been worth several billion dollars.

This is not the only thing Google is doing to combat the Android forking threat as it is gradually locks down Android with closed source creep attack on ASOP as the company attempts to protect “Google Android” from alternative versions by making Google services the main compelling reason to own an Android device.

This deal is also a big win for Lenovo as it acquires a foothold in the US smartphone market along with Motorola’s branding and infrastructure. And with Lenovo’s proven track record selling low margin PC hardware, they will definitely come out swinging and are likely to snap up a weakened HTC further strengthening their Motorola beachhead.

So for now it seems as though the Samsung-Google marriage is safe, however I think with entry of Lenovo into the smartphone market leaves a number of interesting questions to be answered in the coming months and years. Will Google be able to keep Android locked down or will a forked version of Android emerge out of China? Would this be enabled by the emergence of another API/service provider?

Will Samsung fork Android themselves like Amazon has done? And do they have the technical chops to pull it off?

Whatever happens we’re in for an exciting ride.