Google selling Motorola Mobility to Lenovo for $3B

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It is speculation, not a conclusion. Both quality cheap smartphones -- the low end Lumia and the Moto G -- happened under the ownership of software companies.

You're timeline may be off just a bit, unless you consider Nokia to be a software company (only they didn't make the Windows Phone OS, ofc). The Lumia 520 was released in May 2013, and Microsoft didn't announce that they were going to buy Nokia until September.

Lenovo has some mid-specced affordable phones in their home and other markets, like the A850, so they seem to understand the opportunity that's there in selling that kind of kit from at least a certain vantage point.

Anyways, I don't see anything changing in the short term as far as products Motorola under Google would have put out from the way they handled the Think Group acquisition and from Lenovo's CEO's comments about wanting to release something in the US market in a short timespan. In the longer term, we'll see.
 
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This may have been mentioned already but most likely selling Motorola was the condition that Samsung imposed on Google in exchange for the 10 year cross-licensing agreement.
 
Google never wanted to make there own phones. Mostly because it put them at odds with Samsung and others. They don't want to seem like they are playing favorites with android, and you can see that with how the Moto X turned out.
 
This may have been mentioned already but most likely selling Motorola was the condition that Samsung imposed on Google in exchange for the 10 year cross-licensing agreement.

along with having Samsung stop making Touchwiz be the ugliest thing in the world.
 
Man, the future of Motorola Mobility under Google seemed so promising... very sad news :-(
 
So Google sucks those juicy patents out of Motorola and spits out its chewed, dried-out husk for less than what it paid for Nest.

It makes sense though. Google doesn't really care about selling hardware and it probably wasn't in their best interest to potentially piss off big players like Samsung if they feel Google has a vested interest in a competing manufacturer.

Still, I wonder what'll happen to stuff like the Moto G which is pretty unique in the android ecosystem. Google could afford to sell it for no profit but Lenovo will probably kill it as soon a they can.
 
Well Google are keeping one part of Motorolla according to The Verge Google to keep Motorola's Advanced Technology group, including Project Ara modular phone

Google's blockbuster $2.9 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility to Lenovo won't include the Advanced Technology and Projects group led by former DARPA director Regina Dugan. The news was confirmed today on a conference call with Lenovo, and sources familiar with the matter say the group will be integrated with Google's Android team, where Dugan will report to Sundar Pichai but maintain a more independent role.

Dugan, who was named to The Verge 50 earlier this year, manages a team of just under 100 people, all of whom will be moving from their current offices in Sunnyvale to Google's Mountain View office.

GOOGLE WANTS TO SCALE PROJECT ARA

The most notable project to come from Dugan's group was the Project Ara modular phone, which allows different phone configurations to be constructed from various parts. The plan is to use Google's scale and resources to accelerate the project, as well as other wild ideas like security tattoos and other biotech sensors.

Google will also retain the patents developed by the Advanced Technology group, although Lenovo will have a license to them.
 
Man, the future of Motorola Mobility under Google seemed so promising... very sad news :-(

It was promising except for that the cultures were not compatible. Chat with someone familiar with the development of the MotoX and you'll learn more about that. Moto needs to belong to someone like Lenovo so that they can be brought under control. If Google had kept them around, they would have burned billions more trying to reinvent the place and it would have likely ended up the same way.

Google is better off building their consumer brand off the Nexus and pushing strongly into the marketplace with it IMO. Google Play Edition is just a compromise to keep people happy.
 
Still, I wonder what'll happen to stuff like the Moto G which is pretty unique in the android ecosystem. Google could afford to sell it for no profit but Lenovo will probably kill it as soon a they can.

They have a similarly specced phone that they announced would retail for $219 unlocked. So it's easy to imagine that any new projects would retail for a bit more than the $189 precedent Motorola under Google set, but only a bit.
 
There was a rumor floating around yesterday that Google was going to end the Nexus brand next year.

That seems even more absurd after this news.
 
I just don't understand why people are upset about this. Does Lenovo have a bad reputation? As far as I know their laptops (ThinkPad line specifically, which they bought from IBM from 2005) are considered to be good quality stuff.

Lenovo is probably a better match anyway. Google seems to be focused on software and "innovation" anyway. Under Lenovo we'll probably get more stuff like the Moto G but possibly even better and cheaper, and more high end phones to match the ThinkPad line.
 
So between this and the recent rumors of Google dropping the Nexus line by 2015, the future of affordable high spec phones doesn't look too bright.
 
And here I was looking into purchasing a Moto X haha, that won't be happening now.

Moto will just become a part of Lenovo sometime during your contract. What exactly are you worried about?

I imagine Moto has contracts with carriers to support the phone to a certain point and this wouldn't break that.
 
Their patents are what defines and has enabled cellular technology for the past 30 years. They are the most important and pervasive cellular patents, and pretty much everyone has been violating them or trying to contest them for years.

These are mostly considered standard essentials and thus won't do them any good in the court. The reason most fear Apple is that they are sitting on a gold mine of design and non-essential patents.
 
These are mostly considered standard essentials and thus won't do them any good in the court. The reason most fear Apple is that they are sitting on a gold mine of design and non-essential patents.

so then they should have sold the patents to Lenovo. But they kept them and got less money for Moto Mobility.
 
I shall continue to wait for the influx of super cheap Chinese made android phones.

*looks at watch*

Yes. yes. I shall continue to wait patiently.
 
Just to clarify those saying this sale is costing google 9.6 Billion, saw this post on G+ (emphasis is mine):

Moto total cost $12.5B to Goog in 2011:
- $3.2B Moto's 2011 cash
- $2.4B Moto's 2011 deferred tax assets
- $2.35B Moto's Set-top-box business sold in 2012
- $75M Moto's factories business sold in 2013 (incl 7K factory employees)
- $2.91B Moto's Mobility business sold in 2014

Thus Moto's remaining assets including patents, buildings (in Chicago and elsewhere), probably a good part of the 12K employees cost Goog $1.56B.

Doing that, Goog may have well protected and guided the Android ecosystem along in the past couple years.

Nicolas Charbonnier
 
This may have been mentioned already but most likely selling Motorola was the condition that Samsung imposed on Google in exchange for the 10 year cross-licensing agreement.

This sounds like complete baseless speculation. I mean, noone can prove it wrong, but as far as I know there's nothing out there that solidly suggests this at all. Samsung wants in on GLASS hardware, and Im sure cross licensing patents has benefit for both sides.

Just to clarify those saying this sale is costing google 9.6 Billion, saw this post on G+ (emphasis is mine):

Moto total cost $12.5B to Goog in 2011:
- $3.2B Moto's 2011 cash
- $2.4B Moto's 2011 deferred tax assets
- $2.35B Moto's Set-top-box business sold in 2012
- $75M Moto's factories business sold in 2013 (incl 7K factory employees)
- $2.91B Moto's Mobility business sold in 2014

Thus Moto's remaining assets including patents, buildings (in Chicago and elsewhere), probably a good part of the 12K employees cost Goog $1.56B.

Doing that, Goog may have well protected and guided the Android ecosystem along in the past couple years.

Nicolas Charbonnier

Yeah I'm not sure why people are throwing 9b in losses around. Its not even remotely close to that. There's more to things than just the sale prices. They didn't lose anywhere near that much on this. And they retained the patents and the Advanced Tech Group + its patents and staff which was probably the best thing Moto had going. 1.5B for what they have gotten out of this overall isn't that bad. Especially when Nest goes for twice that much.

On the flip side its disappointing because under Google Motorola put out what was by FAR their absolute best smartphones to date. Not even the original Droid can comparatively (for its time) hold a candle to the X and the G.
 
This sounds like complete baseless speculation. I mean, noone can prove it wrong, but as far as I know there's nothing out there that solidly suggests this at all. Samsung wants in on GLASS hardware, and Im sure cross licensing patents has benefit for both sides.



Yeah I'm not sure why people are throwing 9b in losses around. Its not even remotely close to that. There's more to things than just the sale prices. They didn't lose anywhere near that much on this. And they retained the patents and the Advanced Tech Group + its patents and staff which was probably the best thing Moto had going. 1.5B for what they have gotten out of this overall isn't that bad. Especially when Nest goes for twice that much.

On the flip side its disappointing because under Google Motorola put out what was by FAR their absolute best smartphones to date. Not even the original Droid can comparatively (for its time) hold a candle to the X and the G.

And there is more to it than just looking at dollar figures then and now.

There is surely plenty else Google could have done with that money to generate a higher return. I really doubt anyone at Google thinks the acquisition was a success. This was, undoubtedly, a bad deal that didn't come near to justifying the price.
 
Well Google are keeping one part of Motorolla according to The Verge Google to keep Motorola's Advanced Technology group, including Project Ara modular phone

They're probably keeping it not because they wanted it, but because Lenovo was smart enough to not buy such an awful idea and any person who thought it was a smart idea to try to turn PhoneBloks into a real thing.

As literally the entire universe of mobile integrated chip design is working on integrating more parts on a single chip - CPU, GPU, cellular, wi-fi, bluetooth, NFC, and more - to dramatically improve performance, battery life, and reduce costs, they think it's a good idea to break them up again and undo more than a decade of progress?


...Ignoring the fact that the plastic/casing which makes up phones is a significant portion of the price of the phone...and this just increases the ratio of casing to silicon.

...Ignoring the fact that in most phones the battery takes up the vast majority of volume, so unless you want to take a huge hit to battery capacity, you won't have any room left for more "bloks"...after you also consider the fact that breaking things up into individual components will drastically reduce battery efficiency.


Lenovo was either incredibly smart to not buy Ara and the team that backed it, or they dodged a massive bullet.
 
dLMN8R, you do understand that the Motorola Advanced Technology group is more than just that Project Ara phone, right?
 
Without Google pushing them, would Lenovo want to continue with products like the Moto G? LG has been clear that the Nexus 5 as it is sold on the Play store simply isn't possible without Google's involvement.

This will make the motoG the only excellent cheap android smartphone. ever.

They announced the A859 at CES, a mid-spec phone for around $200. They've maintained a series (the A series) of low priced mid-range handsets in every territory they sell phones, so there's some positive news on that front.
 
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