google buys Motorola

Google for Motorola Plantation Fl. That BU might still be badged Motorola.

-- Les Cargill

Drop in the bucket..maybe a day's work (if that) of fab.

I STILL am pissed that the cup holder on my computer closed and sliced my coffee cup in half!

Make that plural "sales repS"..heard from three that had little good to say about (you know who).

e,

isn't all the "pro" radio stuff Motorola solutions? the part google is buying is Motorola mobility?

Google needs some patent firepower to combat Apples all out war on any who makes something with a display in a rectangular form factor

I'm sure Motorola as one of the first to do cell phones has plenty of that

-Lasse

Did i say or hint anything like that? I only stated the facts concerning fab. What if i said that i had 500,000 CK722s all tested as conforming to datasheet specs? That is also, relative to fab quantity, a drop in the bucket. Neither piece of info is (obviously) anywhere adequate for making a buy or sell decision of the manufacturer. A few other items may start to fill out the scenario: what is the market, now and for the next 5 years; what is the present production capability; is that the only product. More important, what is the net profitability of the company; what is the net VALUE of the company (NOT the same as the stock price - refer to WMT since Aug debacle which DID NOT affect its value); what are the CASH reserves (can they buy themselves out with money to spare); how many years have they paid (non-decreasing) dividends; are they a World Dominator (in their business: see INTC, WMT, MSFT, etc all of which qualify hands down). On flip side: are "investors" ga-ga over the crippled company pushing the stock price up? Then SHORT them and get rich! Learn from Warren..

Hint:

A lot of knowledge and hardware is shared between 'pro radio' (TETRA) and rugged mobile dumb phones.

Yes, I misread the site I found (can't find it today), though "National" was the brand used outside the US. They couldn't use "National" in the US because National Radio was already using the trade mark. They came up with PanaSonic in '55, I think.

As I said, the early '00s (2003?). They merged with (bought?) Sanyo last year, so that brand will be going away, too.

Voldemort made semiconductors?!?

remember the zenith modules and exchange depots?

"The works in a drawer, and the drawer in the shop."

Which promptly put all "the works" on one pc board.

A friend worked there at the time of the takeover. Interestingly, he said the first to be laidoff were the Japanese-Americans -- apparently people who looked Japanese but acted American unsettled the people from Matsushita. He hung on as long as he could but Panasonic finally laid everyone off.

At that time, Zenith was suing the Japanese for dumping TVs at less than cost in the US. But apparently the US government had a conscious policy of yielding the US consumer electronics business to Japan, in order to keep them a happy ally. Thus the companies that had made Chicago a world center of consumer electronics: Motorola, National Video, Warwick, Wells-Gardner, Zenith and Rauland, and Admiral, all eventually were pushed out of the business. Some were bought by far Eastern companies like Sanyo and Lucky-Goldstar.

The policy was introduced with the first XL100s, which were modular designs. I don't know for how long they did this, but i know I have an old Electronic Servicing kicking around somewhere that had an ad that included that strange warranty. I'll see if I can find it, scan it, and get you a copy. Back when the first SS TVs were introduced, TV techs were terrified of transistors, and having most active components on modules took some of the fear away. It also helped allay the fears of consumers of this new technology. Lots of TV owners back then would pull their own tubes, bring them to a local dealer to test, and replace many of them. Of course, modules add cost, complexity, and reduce reliability, so manufacturers did away with modules when they could.

RCAs first transistor color TV was the "Trans Vista" line that predated the XL100 by a couple of years (68-70?). The Trans Vista was nearly identical to the XL100 electrically (including the sophisticated SCR sweep), but was physically laid out like a CTC39X; no modules at all. It was a lot like a 39X without tubes (although the first year used a tube HV rect, second year a tripler). These TVs were expensive and in limited quantity. We sold a handful and they were bullet proof, unlike earlier tube RCAs that drove us nuts (flybacks burning up in a few hours after delivery was not uncommon) I suspect that once RCA saw the Trans Vistas were trouble free (and they were), they introduced the XL100 modular TV with a big advertising budget. The only controversy I can remember about the first XL100 is that a few of their modules were ceramic, surface mount, and encapsulated. The three kine outputs and the audio amp are the ones I can remember. Some speculated that RCA was trying to keep techs from repairing the modules, but I suspect it was more about production cost and reliability. Soon after, those boards were redesigned to be conventional phenolic with leaded components, and were fully compatible front and back.

Later, RCA was the first domestic to go to a unitized chassis doing away with all modules and even transistor sockets, joining the imports in the way TVs were made. I remember a lot of guys at service seminars bitching about having to unsolder transistors to check them (they had to learn how to check them with a meter and scope in a hurry). I always had a bit of a soft spot for this company, and I hope Jack Welch burns in hell for what he did to them.

John

At the time, before robotic components and board handling, if you cut a board in half, it would double the price. Each board had to carry its own cost burden of stuffing, handling, soldering, testing, inventory, shipping, etc, not to mention the interconnect costs. It was a huge cost savings to put everything on a single board, with one exception. If the yield was lousy and the board did not have sufficient test points and documentation to repair, then all the cost savings went into the dumpster.

Zenith was an oddity. While everyone else was promoting the benefits of printed circuit boards, Zenith was proclaiming the superiority of their "hand wired" chassis.

Yep. I don't know the details, but I was told that the import duties and tax laws of late 1960's were structured to make it cheaper to build a product in Japan, than in the USA. Also, Japan's import duties made it prohibitively expensive to import consumer products into Japan.

Gosh, this really sounds like US and China today, except with China it is almost all labor containing products.

?-)

Kodak failed to spin off their professional film divisions so it all went down.

...and we *still* haven't learned that lesson.

There's a lot in parallel. Remember - just about everything in China has the aspect of a Potemkin village. They manage to do well because they throw a *lot* of hands at it, and adapt process to meet requirements at a deep level. The country's run by engineers, and they know how to set and fill metrics. By "engineers", I mean some real Dilberts, too.

"After the meeting at which Jobs expressed his dissatisfaction, one of his execs booked a flight to China, where he knew there was a factory that could mobilize three thousand workers on a moments notice, by which I mean, waking them up in their dorm beds, putting them on the production line, and training them to cut the glass for the iPhone screen."

That's a a synopsis of a lot of articles form reputable sources. I have to wonder how important the latencies involved really are? Why in the world would another week before rollout make any difference?

I don't mean "Potemkin village" as a perjorative; they're trying to figure it out as best they can. But they completely seem to be failing at developing a consumer culture much. Maybe that is good; I don't know.

but eventually the prices are gonna equalize in China. Then we'll see.

It can also be considered to be a lot like America, in the period before the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. There are a lot of ways to do this sort of thing...

-- Les Cargill

Seriously; read Peter Drucker. He set them on that path, and one thing Japanese culture is good at is preserving that kind of idea over long spans of time.

There is a Nova about the making of a katana, and it's engrossing and somewhat terrifying at the same time.

The level of commitment to the process seems to pretty much be the point of the object itself. The closest I can get in Western culture is something like Mount Rushmore or a cathedral like Chartres.

The piece gives of the aroma of "industrial process as religious devotional." I don't get the sense that any of it is actually written down.

-- Les Cargill