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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
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
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.
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
Maybe you missed the part about them keeping the patents. This is part of their strategic goals of supporting Android without having to bother with managing a phone company.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
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.
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.
As I pointed out elsewhere, this isn't the only sale from that purchase. Look here
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ti...
They already sold off parts of that 13 bn for 2 bn in cash and 15% stake in another company. This makes another 2 bn. They also got to keep the patents, and got massive tax writeoffs for years. They may have come out ahead on cash (depending on the tax writeoffs) and definitely ended up buying those patents for a few billion max.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Except that the Motorola acquisition also included ~$5B in cash and tax incentives, plus the other parts that Google already sold, plus the other parts of Motorola they're still keeping.
I'm on the shitty mobile site, so sorry I can't be more specific. But check the other threads; some are estimating the patents cost as little as $1.5B.
Thank you. I couldn't remember how much cash Motorola had. I thought it was between $3-5 billion. Plus didn't Google sell the cable box group for a couple billion almost right away too? The entire deal was to pad their patent war-chest to defend Android anyhow
I have no idea what the actual value is, but they picked up 15,000+ patents in the deal. Which is pretty damn convenient. Especially since the Apple/Samsung patent shitfest started.
They need the extra cash to pay Lycos for AdWords royalties.
It is a big thing when the main beef people have is that "build quality dropped."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.