Google To Acquire Motorola Mobility For $12.5 Bill

zacharye writes "Google and Motorola Mobility have announced an agreement whereby Google will acquire Motorola for $12.5 billion. The acquisition price equates to $40 per share of Motorola stock, or a premium of 63% over Friday's closing price. The move is considered to be an effort that will better-align Google to compete with Apple's iPhone, which currently owns two-thirds of profits among the world's top-8 smartphone vendors..." That's one way to stop royalty payments.

Comments

Didn't see this one coming

[Xest]

I read this on the BBC and I have to admit, I didn't see this one coming!

At least we know now why Google didn't seem too bothered about winning the Nortel patents. This gives it a serious cell phone patents battle chest, and a manufacturer of decent tablets and handsets to boot.

The question is, if it's going to be Google owned, will this mean Motorola devices will be opened up as up until now they seemed to be the most locked down Android devices. Judging by the openness of the Nexus One etc. I'd imagine and hope this will be the case!

Re:Didn't see this one coming

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The question is, if it's going to be Google owned, will this mean Motorola devices will be opened up as up until now they seemed to be the most locked down Android devices. Judging by the openness of the Nexus One etc. I'd imagine and hope this will be the case!

That will be interesting: I suspect that it will tell us whether the locked bootloader nonsense is actually a carrier demand(and, if so, a carrier demand that they want to stick to, or one that they'll bend on with a touch of pressure) or whether it was a 'hardware companies would prefer that software upgrades be accomplished by hardware replacement' problem...

Obviously Google doesn't want to lose money on their new hardware division; but it seems pretty unlike them(and poor strategy in the face of Apple's relentless hardware/software integration) to play nickel-and-dime software lock upgrade drive games to eke out a few extra handset sales at the expense of customer satisfaction and overall success of Android and the various web services that Google actually makes their money on.

On the other hand, if handset locking is some sort of carrier fetish(that they are only willing to make limited exceptions to, for the occasional flagship device), we might not see much change. Google's attempts to crack the carriers through direct sales have been underwhelming in their success so far, and Apple's sales number suggest that Joe Public isn't clamoring for an unlocked bootloader... At least Google is unlikely to cruft up stock Android too heavily.

Re:Didn't see this one coming

[Xest]

I actually made an assumption there, but you have a good point. I Googled Motorola mobility though, and got this:

http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/GB-EN/Home

The page title says:

Motorola Android Mobile Smart Phones and Tablets - Bluetooth Accessories - Home Video Networks - Motorola Mobility, Inc. United Kingdom

So it looks like it does include tablets. But what I didn't assume was the other things it appears to include:

http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/GB-EN/Consumer-Products-and-Services

I didn't even realise Motorola produced some of these things, but could it mean we'll see Google SatNavs, Google Car Kits, Google Cable/DSL modems, Google DVRs, and er, Google Baby Monitors?

I'll be intrigued to know if Google discontinues some of those less relevant lines, but this is kind of exciting if you're a fan of Android, because if Motorola does DVRs, SatNavs and Car Kits too then Google may well be planning to extend Android into the car and living room with a bit more seriousness than previously the case. It looks like Motorola Mobility has it's fingers in all the pies a tech company might want to be able to produce a full lifestyle ecosystem encompassing home, and travel (god, I feel like I just spat out some sales speak there, excuse me whilst I go vomit).

I've always wanted to be able to just add things to my calendar on my tablet in the kitchen, then walk into the living room and use it to display TVs listings to tell my TV what to play, or to choose some content from my fileserver to stream to the TV, then set it to play some music. Then when that's done, walk out to my car and automatically have my car continue playing whatever music I'd previously set playing on my TV, and when I reach my destination have my phone take over that playlist as I put my headphones on and plug them into it. Obviously you can kind of do all this now, but it requires some serious hackery, and is far from being a pleasant, seamless, system. You need to really know what you're doing.

Let's face it, it's the future, it's just waiting for someone to take a serious stab at it. Will Google make an attempt at that now that they've got the hardware base to go with their software division? I'm hoping so!

The only thing we'll need then is for it to be standardised so that you can buy a product from any manufacturer whether it's an iPad or a Playbook,a Xoom, or a Tab and have it integrate into such a system. Okay, well, maybe now I'm REALLY asking too much ;)

Re:Didn't see this one coming

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

They're up 15% immediately after the announcement. That tells something.

It tells us that the market thinks there's a greater chance Nokia will soon be acquired by someone else -- probably MS. This has nothing to do with mobile OS wars!

Hardware vs Software

[CaptainLard]

So now that Google has all of Motorola's patents on 2G,3G,4G, (the hardware side) and apple has all those patents on user interface (software side), are we going to be seeing an epic east Texas showdown that results in every new smartphone requiring TWO huge additional licensing fees getting passed on to the consumer?

Re:Royalty payments.

[Goboxer]

Microsoft's number of shares: 8.38 Billion 51% of MSFT: 4,273,800,000 Market Price per share: $25 Cost to buy 51% at Market Price: $181,845,000,000 (Roughly $182 Billion) Apple's Net Income for Q2 2011: $7 to $8 billion Conclusion: Apple would be better served doing a massive buy-back of their own stock. They would drive the value of their stock up (something people seem to covet). They wouldn't have to deal with a nasty and fruitless FCC investigation. And they wouldn't be purchasing a sinking ship (as many see MSFT).

Microsoft

[akirchhoff]

This will probably force Microsoft to buy Nokia outright. As much as they would like to just collect license fees, they need a vertically integrated platform.

Re:is it just me

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Yup Google just switched over to the Apple model: complete control over both the hardware platform and the software, it's going to get real interesting. OTOH this must cause quite a bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth over at Samsung and other Android vendors, seeing as they are now not only competing against Google directly on a platform Google controls, but Google now also has even less incentive to help out their partners/competitors with patent issues.

Easy way to increase production

[WindBourne]

The US DOD is studying using smart phones for troop communications. Having all the smart phones produced in China makes ZERO sense. Instead, Google can approach DOD and cut a deal that they will bring back manufacturing to the USA if DOD will buy their phones. WIth that approach, and throwing in automation, Google can have 10% of their phones being bought by the DOD. That lowers prices a great deal.

Re:is it just me

[Anonymous Coward]

Google won't convert Android to an exclusive OS, a la iOS. First, it means stabbing long time partners in the back, and loosing a lot of advertising market share.
Also that would play into Apple's hands because Motorola can't compete with Apple on it's own (yet) without a help from Samsung, HTC, Sony...and every other Android OEM that contributes to the platform becoming "new Windows".
Now imagine that they have to fork Android, make it incompatible with each other, or even migrate to other OS-es like Bada.
that would be detrimental to Google's business, a suicide move.
Finally we have everyone, except Apple and Nokia, on the same OS ship, it would be tragic to destroy that kind of success.

I don't believe that they shelled out $12bn only to get patents and sink the company.
Motorola was outcompeted and becoming less and less recognizable as a brand. Google-Motorola will fix the latter. I would expect a lot of people wanting to buy Android product that is made by it's creator. Look how it works for Apple. Also they are in unique position to develop hardware and software at the same time, which can result in making great products. Again, only Apple is in such position now. In addition, they will be able to imitate Apple's business of buying next-gen technology ahead of time, because they have cash reserves, unlike most other OEMs (main requirement for this is brand recognition). So in the long term Apple is getting some very serious competition (if they, as I hope, choose to compete and didn't buy them only for patents).

At last, the patents acquired are extremely valuable. The "weak portfolio" problem fixed very easilly for $12bn.

Re:is it just me

[Lev13than]

Depends on what you think the "shit" is. Some people are saying it's hw/sw integration, and others are all about patent trolling. In reality, this is part of Google's effort to strengthen its position in eCommerce, specifically mobile and POS payments.

Put an RFID chip in every phone and you instantly get an EMV-compliant card replacement and an EMV-compliant card acceptance point. Forget all that Square magstripe bs - this would be the real thing. Combine it with Google Wallet and you have an end-to-end solution where anyone can make or accept payments via their phone. With Google controlling the hw and the sw they can set the standards. To make it even more interesting, think of what would happen if/when Google buys MasterCard.

Go ahead with this and you'll have every taxi driver, flea market, convention booth and convenience store in the country with cheap access to payments issuance and acceptance. Now move that model to Africa and the Middle East. The future of mobile isn't handsets - it's payments.