Motorola, The Good and The Deal

The giant American mobile phone manufacturer Motorola has announced they have signed a deal with the Santa Clara based mobile software developer Good Technologies through which Motorola is going to acquisition the latter, a transaction that will come effective beginning with early 2007.

Ton Garriques, the president of Motorola mobile devices business, has declared that "the addition of Good Technology will advance Motorola's vision of seamless mobility. Good Technology's solutions, talent and customers complement Motorola's business and extend our ability to deliver compelling products and services to enterprise customers. Good Technology's software and managed service deliver a rich user experience, low cost of ownership, industry-leading security and enterprise-class support. These competitive differentiators have led many enterprise customers to choose Good Technology. This acquisition will continue to strengthen Motorola as a leading provider of mobility devices and solutions both for enterprise customers and consumers."

For the moment, there is only one Motorola device using Good Technologies software, that being the Motorola Q, but considering that the service offerings and the software from Good Tech. is available through more than 12.000 enterprises world wide, this move made by Motorola can be seen as a "big land grab in the enterprise mobility market at this point", as Maribel Lopez, the Vice President at Forrester Research, has said. Also, she has declared that "Good on its own is not going to be as good as Good with Motorola. Motorola is really trying to make a name for itself in enterprise mobility. They had the handset market, and it was just one piece of the pie. Now they have a much broader application platform."

To cut the story short, the deal signed by the American mobile manufacturer and the Good Technologies software developer can be perceived as a clear intention from Motorola to compete with other mobile manufacturers from another level that will offer them the certainty they have the most chances to get in front.

If one realizes that the push email solution that has been implemented in the Motorola Q smartphone is a direct competitor to the BlackBerry service offered by Research In Motion, one could also realize that the time has come when the going gets rough even for RIM. For their sake, let's hope they're going to get tough in response to Motorola's move.