• by Aaron Baar , August 15, 2011

Google's surprise purchase of Motorola Mobility may make it harder for other handset makers, such as HTC, Samsung and LG, to gain traction with people who may view the Motorola-made sets as the cream of the crop.

"It definitely raises some questions about how [those companies] will be able to compete with them," Gartner research director Michael Gartenberg tells Marketing Daily. "I think the Motorola phones will be the embodiment of [Android-powered] devices and tablets. The third parties will have to make their own decisions [about operating systems and/or customizing the Android OS to their hardware]."

In its largest purchase of an outside company, Google announced Monday it would acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, an offer that is a 63% premium over Motorola's closing stock price last week. The deal would make Google the second-largest Android handset maker in the United States, according to mobile app analytics firm Localytics.

According to Localytics, Motorola currently has 29% of the Android market in the U.S., ahead of Samsung (which has 25%) but behind HTC (which has 35%). Google's share could increase if the consumer perception is such that the Motorola handsets were somehow better or more advanced by being a part of Google.

"If, for example, Google provides preferential access to the Android code to its own hardware division, this would place other vendors at a disadvantage," Nick Dillon, an analyst at Ovum, told Cnet.

In a company blog post, Google CEO Larry Page said the company was committed to Android remaining an open-source system available to all handset makers, and that Motorola would be run as a separate entity. Meanwhile, the competitors (at least publicly) praised the deal.

In statements issued to accompany Google's press release, executives from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, HTC and LG, all said they "welcome" the announcement (every statement used that word), insisting it proved Google's commitment to the platform.

"We welcome the news of today's acquisition, which demonstrates that Google is deeply committed to defending Android, its partners, and the entire ecosystem," read the statement from Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corp.

The companies may be praising the deal because there is a hidden benefit behind it. With the deal, Google will acquire more than 17,000 patents, which it can use to defend its vendors (i.e., handset makers) from lawsuits from companies such as Apple and Microsoft, Gartenberg says.

"Now that Google has these patents, it can help," he says. "There's some good news for [these other makers], but there's definitely challenges for them as well."