Taylor Wimberly: Motorola making next Nexus

BY Stefan Constantinescu

Published 9 Aug 2013

Taylor Wimberly doesn’t often leak the inside knowledge he has access to, but when he’s done so in the past, boy oh boy has he been right. Do I trust him as a source? Yes. His latest knowledge bomb is about the next Nexus phone. According to him, Motorola will make it, and it’s not going a be a stock version of the Moto X, instead it’ll be something different.

Now let’s analyze this. HTC made the first Nexus. Samsung made the next two. And LG made the most recent model. Many people, myself included, were expecting this year’s Nexus contract to either go to LG again or to be handed to a Chinese handset maker looking to prove themselves, like Lenovo.

For Google to demonstrate to all their partners that a Nexus will be made by Motorola, which Google owns, is the equivalent of a slap in the face. Let’s also not forget that Nexus devices are not made in isolation by the handset maker. It’s a process where Google holds the company’s hand along every step of the way. If Taylor is right, that means Motorola would essentially be lying about the firewall between them and Google because by the very definition of being a Nexus, it would mean Google would have to work with Motorola.

Why is Google even doing this weird dance of convincing people that Motorola is their own company? Like I said earlier, they want to reassure their other partners (Samsung, LG, Sony, HTC, etc.) that they’re still loved.

This will be a fun Q4 to watch.