[smt88]

Samsung is (and has been) terrified that their handset business will be slaughtered in the race to the bottom of the hardware industry. They tried to create their own OS to give themselves an edge over other Android manufacturers.

Their fears have come true (and now it's even happening to Apple). Hardware is an incredibly difficult, risky business, and differentiation is now in the services/software arena. That's why Samsung, in particular, needs this acquisition (and others like it).

[ethbro]

One thing that I never understood was how the Android hardware ecosystem never saw contributing resources to developing more efficiently abstracted core Linux + Android support for their hardware compatibility challenges as a competitive advantage.

Disclaimer: I'm not involved in that space, so maybe they've started?