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Google Sells Motorola Mobility To Lenovo For $2.91 Billion
_0x783czar writes "Google today announced that they will be selling Motorola Mobility to Lenovo for the sum of $2.91 billion USD. Google says the move should allow the company to receive the attention and focus it deserves in order to thrive. From the announcement: '[T]he smartphone market is super competitive, and to thrive it helps to be all-in when it comes to making mobile devices. It's why we believe that Motorola will be better served by Lenovo — which has a rapidly growing smartphone business and is the largest (and fastest-growing) PC manufacturer in the world. This move will enable Google to devote our energy to driving innovation across the Android ecosystem, for the benefit of smartphone users everywhere.' Google was quick to add that this does not signal a move away from their other hardware projects. Additionally Google will 'retain the vast majority of Motorola's patents,' which they hope to continue using to stabilize the Android ecosystem. The deal has yet to be approved by either the U.S. or China."
That's gonna leave a mark. A -$10 billion mark!
captcha: failure
That didn't take long...I wonder what Lenovo's plans are?
Google paid almost $13 billion less than 2 years ago and are selling for nearly $3 billion today. I hope those patents were worth it...
Considering the $4.5B that the Rockstar group paid for ~4000 mobile-related patents, and that Google is keeping the "Vast Majority" of the Motorola patents, the bulk of the price difference may well be in the IP.
A quick google didn't quickly give me a number for how many patents Google is keeping, but if Lenovo is getting about 2000 patents, and that is not the "Vast Majority", then there are a LOT of patents.
I gotta get me some more patents.
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
As much as they might say they are still building hardware - obviously not to the same degree.
Instead Google is focusing on making other hardware makers produce better Android devices, the evidence of which is the smack-down Google gave Samsung at CES.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First they overpay for Motorola Mobility. Now they're overpaying for Nest. Is Eric Schmidt still available to provide "adult supervision"?
At least this will even out their recent cash flow: $3.2B out for Nest, $2.9B in for Motorola. Well, almost - they're still down by a mere $300M.
WTF that makes no sense. A 10 billion dollar loss on a company they really just purchased. And they are moving aggressively into the hardware space on all other fronts. Google seems to be a churn and burn company. If it isn't paying off right now they close it or sell it.
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
Motorola has a distinguished history as a great American company. It was founded in 1928 and outlasted all its electronics contemporaries from that era, including RCA and Dumont. It had a great hit in the Razr (the iPhone before the iPhone). Now Google has sold Motorola to China.
what happened to Motorola becoming the ultimate google phone!?!
Silicon Valley sure knows how to rake in the cash hand over fist, but has absolutely no clue what to do with it once they have it.
Are the patents worth 9 billions? The cost is probably less with motorolla cash and tax breaks but that is still a lot of money.
Well, that nicely explains why Samsung announced that they were willing to work more closely with Google to make Samsung phones cohere to Google's direction with Android.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Motorola abandoned their once-flagship Photon 4G, leaving it fully locked from their most recent OTA update--renegging on their promise to update it to ICS. It's plenty fast enough to run Kit-Kat, and do so well. But since it can't be updated, mine is worth a whopping $17 trade-in to Sprint, where if it were updated to Kit-Kat no doubt would be worth at least a $100 or so.
just give out the all channels unlock code
they have been doing it for a long while. Ever since the G1.
Maybe exiting the hardware market was Google's part of the deal at CES
the smack-down Google gave Samsung at CES.
I'm not sure there's enough information yet to know it was a smack-down. If part of the agreement was that Google has to sell Motorola, that would be quite a concession. And of course it may be that the agreement is for Google to adopt some or all of Samsung's UX design into Android. That would result in them shipping a standard Android distribution in future, without them actually changing anything.
i.e. the guys that brought you the 680x and 680x0 cpus and
a ton of other stuff.
That's a pretty big shopping spree Lenovo has been on. I sure hope it pays off for them -- I like their hardware, despite all the naysayers out there, I've never had problems with their stuff yet.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Well, I guess that whole "built in USA" thing on the MotoX was a fluke.
and here I actually had a positive feeling about Google for a bit. Oh well.
I prefer most of the Samsung apps to the Google ones.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
This was always the point of the purchase. Google needed those patents to defend themselves. They bought the company to get the patents, and now that they've decided which ones matter, they are passing along the rest of the company to someone who cares. They got what they wanted, paid the price they felt was worth it, and are now happily sitting with patents that they can use to counter attacks by other patent holders in the smart phone market. I believe there was intense speculation about this being the motive when we first discussed this purchase on Slashdot.
Gotta say this is probably a better state for Android to be in from a "standard platform" point of view, a company making hardware and licencing its software to other hardware manufacturers hasn't work out very well in computing in the past. Either own the lot (Apple) or provide yourself as a service but don't compete (Microsoft pre-Surface). If you compete and licence, you end up being Apple during the clone years, or Palm. Companies might take a free ride on a crocodile, but they'll get off when they can cause it's not very safe...
Lenovo has done a decent job with Thinkpad, so it's not entirely doom for Moto either.
Lenovo again? First you took my Thinkpad now my Moto X.
I guess the "Don't be Evil" Google is long dead. The principled stand of exiting from the Chinese market, followed by assembling the Moto X in the US, then selling Motorola to Lenovo? ? ? WTF, Google.
If you're going to reply to something, can you make sure your reply isn't in a quote block?
Soon you're talking real money.
If you're going to reply to something, can you make sure your reply isn't in a quote block?
No.
I thought the very purchase of Motorola Mobility was the patent trove. It would protect Android from attacks by Apple and the like.
So I wonder why they're selling to Lenovo now. It's kind of odd when you come right down to it.
That's like saying Foxconn has always been making Iphones not Apple. Making and designing are two different things.
If you're going to reply to something, can you make sure your reply isn't in a quote block?
No.
You're not trying very hard, are you?
I thought they were barely profitable. They must be scraping money together somehow.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The ink is barely dry on the acquisition of IBM's x86 server business for about $2.3 billion and now the purchase of Motorola for $2.91 billion. These could be genius longsighted moves but to me it seems that Lenovo is in danger of trying to expand too quickly.
I'm not going to complain about that because it happens to me more than I care to admit.
It takes a little more work but I think we can all parse what he was saying.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you're going to reply to something, can you make sure your reply isn't in a quote block?
No.
You're not trying very hard, are you?
Look
I
hate
you
Is 1563649 a prime number?
A wise man once said, "A fool and his/her money are soon parted."
Google seems to be playing the fool in this instance....
They need the extra cash to pay Lycos for AdWords royalties.
Troll much?
Lenovo has ALWAYS made the Thinkpad, even when it was called the IBM Thinkpad.
Revisionist history much? While Lenovo did manufacture the Thinkpad line for some years before buying the brand, they were not ALWAYS the manufacturer used for IBM's Thinkpad line.
When the Thinkpad laptops were introduced in 1992, the lower-end Thinkpad 300 series were manufactured by Zenith Data Systems. http://oldcomputers.net/ibm-thinkpad.html. I can't find documentation, but my recollection is that the 700 series introduced that same year were manufactured at the IBM facility in Raleigh, NC.
Seriously, Google should hang on to this and expand it here. If not, then simply IPO it after helping them get a bit of a start. This absolutely should NOT go to China. Big mistake. Instead, there is a lot of innovation that can come from them. They just need to start doing it.
"Ecosystem"?
In addition to all the other factors mentioned above, Google deliberately sold Motorola for less than it was worth in order to reap a huge tax writeoff. That's nearly eight billion dollars in tax savings they already don't pay.
I like their hardware
I really like the hardware of the companies they bought. I am not sure if I trust Lenovo with keeping the spirit alive.
I'm very surprised by this. I think some of us were looking forward to new moto g and x variants as they have a nice shape and form factor and well balanced features. They brought something different to the market that Motorola on their own failed to do. And then they sell it off for 1/5 of what they paid? Win for China, just as Microsoft allowing Windows on manufacturers in Asia was a win for Taiwan and other countries.
Not only Lenovo can produce good phones, but I suppose that Lenovo being a Chinese parent company it should be a little harder for known manufacturers with patent-trolling spirits to locally sue a Chinese company over some meaningless bullsh!t ... rounded rectangles un phone design for example?
Could this be the death of Blackberry?
Lenovo is heavy into supplying computers to global business and if they approach it right, it might be an easy step in to the business world.
"We're your vendor approved hardware supplier, why not buy our phones too!"
Google only needed Motorola's vast patent portfolio; the rest of the company was unneeded baggage. Since the patents alone are worth more than 10 billion to the Big G, it's a reasonably good deal for them, especially in the very long term.
It's uncommonly nice of Google to sell off the leftovers instead of just destroying them like Oracle or Microsoft would have done. Very much in the line of self-serving public spirit that we would like the most successful companies to have.
But I'm sure that gutting the corporate culture that gave us things like MotoBlur and setting a major Android manufacturer on a path to sell "almost but not quite Nexus" devices also plays a fairly large part in their greater strategy for Android.
I'm still impressed with the build quality of the ThinkPad and ThinkCenter line, and that acquisition was back in 2005.
Actually, the big relief is that their support is still as good as ever. I've called for parts (under warranty) at 3 PM and had the part show up the next day. I don't think I've ever had to sit on hold for more than 5 minutes before speaking to an actual person, and most of the time it's been no hold at all. My previous employer was an all-IBM shop and we were concerned when we heard they were selling their desktop and laptop division, but I don't think Lenovo has let thing slip.
Redundancy is good And also good.
Don't forget that the Motorola Moto X has the best LTE connectivity of any smatphone on the market by a wide margin. It's fairly symmetric about all azimuths, too. The Moto X is best at doing what phones are arguably supposed to do best--be a phone. A bigger, faster phone is no good if it can't even connect to Google Maps, or if its radios take 30 seconds to a minute to switch between 3G/4G/Wi-Fi.
you MUST be insane!
Google's main priority is the Android ecosystem. One attractive property of Android is the level-playing field (or at least one that is only reasonably bumpy rather than mountainous). Google's ownership of Mobility gave it patents that will probably be useful, and of course they aren't letting go of those, so what is sold is not what is bought. Google's ownership of one player can at least give the impression that Google will favour its own, or at least will tend to under commercial pressure. Letting Mobility go, even for a significant writedown compared to what they paid, may in the long run be repaid in the value of Android compared to what it would have been had Google held onto Mobility. We can never tell, though, since we can't do a copy-on-write fork of the universe, and run both cases in parallel: and if we could there would surely be better uses for the facility than evaluating smartphone economics.
John_Chalisque