Medicine, the iPhone, and Google

Before the opening of markets on Monday, August 15, Google announced its pending deal to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.

Why would Google want to buy Motorola when they risk torching a perfectly good relationship with mobile device manufacturers Samsung and HTC?

The reasons provided by Larry Page on that morning’s conference call was both obvious and plausible but, as industry observers know, was crafted for public consumption.  Google is not about to lay out its rationale in detail as doing so is tantamount to to giving its competitors a page from its strategy handbook.

To be sure, acquiring Motorola’s treasure trove of IP assets is one reason (especially in light of Google not being invited to the Nortel patent party last month).  But I strongly doubt that losing out on the Nortel bid did anything but cement what Google was already planning with Motorola.

The acquisition has much more to do with ensuring that, to paraphrase hockey great Wayne Gretzky, Google can go where the technology is going to be.  We’ve had a few hints in the past four years about just where the smart money is being placed:

1. The mobile conga line that Apple’s iPhone started in 2007 and, with it, the creation of over 425,000 mobile applications (Android has 250,000).  Gartner estimates that smartphone sales grew 74% yr/yr.
2. The follow-up tsunami created by the release of the Apple iPad in 2010, with an expected 35 million to be sold through 2011.  The same Gartner study estimates 428 million mobile devices were sold in 2Q 2011.
3. IBM’s August declaration of the 30th anniversary of the PC that the PC is dead, ceding way to the growing number of mobile + wireless devices that are dominating the market.

The final hint - the one that really strikes home for me - is this 17-minute video of Eric Topol’s presentation at TedMed 2009.  It may have seemed a little “out there” two years ago, but not today.  Topol presents more than the future of Wireless Medicine.  He provides a peek into our very near future.  A future in which mobile devices, networks, and applications meld together to create innovations as fast as we can consume them

This is why Google had to buy a mobile device manufacturer.  Watch Eric Topol’s presentation and judge for yourself.