Google to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12B

Dan 15 Aug, 2011 at 10:23am ET Article published in Tech

Motorola (MMI), a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance, has been announced to be the latest acquisition target from Google. Google will pay USD$12B for the company.

Google’s reasoning for the purchse was listed in their press release this morning as:

In 2008, Motorola bet big on Android as the sole operating system across all of its smartphone devices. It was a smart bet and we’re thrilled at the success they’ve achieved so far. We believe that their mobile business is on an upward trajectory and poised for explosive growth.

Motorola is also a market leader in the home devices and video solutions business. With the transition to Internet Protocol, we are excited to work together with Motorola and the industry to support our partners and cooperate with them to accelerate innovation in this space.

Motorola’s total commitment to Android in mobile devices is one of many reasons that there is a natural fit between our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers everywhere.

Press Release

Comments

15 Aug 2011 ~ 11:24am Kwitko I see advantages and disadvantages to this. MOT makes good hardware, probably has a boatload of patents, and strong brand recognition. On the downside, how will this affect HTC, Samsung, and other Android handset makers?
15 Aug 2011 ~ 11:31am Thrax If Android only bought Moto to defend against patent trolling, and operates Motorola independently as promised (e.g. no Google DroidX two years down the line), then this is very positive for the other manufacturers. Their primary defender just cracked a case of stim paks and went nuts.

If, however, Google screws with the chain of command by planning and releasing a Google DroidX or something, then it's shit in the soup and bad news all around. Never compete against your manufacturers. I think Google knows this, though.
15 Aug 2011 ~ 11:54am Kwitko I don't think Google is dumb enough to shoot themselves in the foot by alienating the majority of its handset manufacturers. I'm sure the patent portfolio was reason #1.
15 Aug 2011 ~ 12:10pm Thrax This is what I truly find amusing.

Google successfully raised the price on the Nortel patent auction to $4.5 billion for 6000 patents. Apple and Microsoft wanted to pay substantially less, and everyone was wringing their hands about the inflated value of a patent (about $750k per patent).

Now let's look at the Moto Mobility merger. Moto has 17,000 patents, with another 7000 in the pipeline, for $12.5 billion. That's about $735k a patent. Google walks away from this deal with 4x the patents, stretching back some 30 years, at a cheaper price for every single one of them.

The Nortel auction suddenly seems trivial.
15 Aug 2011 ~ 12:21pm Garg I'm guessing it's all about patents. If so, I wonder why someone else didn't snatch them up? In the webcast, they ignored the question re: if there was competitive bidding.

I think I should make a fantasy video game where evil empires snatch up magical dohickies that control basic behaviors and make it a commentary on the patent system.
15 Aug 2011 ~ 11:24pm Trumandrummer Hey, I know its a long shot...

But maybe they won't lock the bootloader on future Moto androids...

I had a chance to take a free X2 (Buy one get one free, my brother bought one), but I opted out solely because its bootloader is locked.
15 Aug 2011 ~ 11:32pm Thrax Sucks for you, because a hack called "second init" allows you to root and install custom ROMs on the DX2.
15 Aug 2011 ~ 11:34pm CrazyJoe Even if you didn't use the phone, why would you turn down a free one?
15 Aug 2011 ~ 11:59pm Trumandrummer

Crazy Joe wrote:

Even if you didn't use the phone, why would you turn down a free one?

The only way to get the free one, is to activate it on another line and renew the 2 year contract.
It would have used my 2 year upgrade. And I didn't want to use it yet for that phone. So I passed it on to my mom.

@Thrax
I didn't see that yet, but that's gonna make my brother real happy. But that's ok. After playing with his phone, I like it, but I didn't think it was worthy of my 2 year upgrade. The resolution is nice, but I don't really like the qHD pentile display. It looks pixelated. And the Detroit area is 4G now, so I think I want to go 4G when I upgrade.
16 Aug 2011 ~ 12:01am Thrax We agree. The DX2 is a nice phone, but not worth getting locked into for 2 years, especially not 20 days from the Galaxy S II, and 30-60 days from the next-gen dual core phones. PenTile also sucks.
16 Aug 2011 ~ 12:04am CrazyJoe

Trumandrummer wrote:

The only way to get the free one, is to activate it on another line and renew the 2 year contract.
It would have used my 2 year upgrade. And I didn't want to use it yet for that phone.

Ah, makes sense, and what Tuesday said about the upcoming phones.
16 Aug 2011 ~ 12:04am Trumandrummer

Thrax wrote:

We agree. The DX2 is a nice phone, but not worth getting locked into for 2 years, especially not 20 days from the Galaxy S II, and 30-60 days from the next-gen dual core phones. PenTile also sucks.

Yea, those were my thoughts exactly.
Is Verizon getting the Galaxy S II?
Also the rumors about the HTC Vigor got me wanting to wait too.
16 Aug 2011 ~ 12:08am Thrax Everyone but T-Mobile appears to be getting the SGS2. T-Mo appears to be getting a weird variant called the Samsung Hercules, which has a .2" larger screen and a different CPU.

Vigor is one of those "30-60 days away" phones, and it should be nice.
16 Aug 2011 ~ 12:11am Thrax Also, now seems like a good time to pimp the "what phones are coming next?" thread.