Google sells Motorola to Lenovo for $2.91 billion
Lenovo becomes the third largest smartphone manufacturer
Google confirms it’s selling Motorola’s hardware business to Lenovo for $2.91b. In its official blog, Google justified its decision describing the move as “important for all Android users”. Larry Page explains that the deal would let Google focus on innovations within the platform. At the same time, Lenovo would become the third largest manufacturer in the world.
Google is getting $2.91 billion for Motorola, or far less than the company paid ($12.5 billion) to acquire the company back in 2011. Despite the big plans, Google didn’t manage to help Motorola gain traction and only few of its new models received attention. However, under the Lenovo / Google deal, the latter is keeping the patent portfolio in order to “defend the Android ecosystem”. Lenovo is getting the Motorola brand and the whole hardware division, while the access to exclusive patents will be regulated in a new license agreement between Google and Lenovo.
After the acquisition, Lenovo-Motorola would become the world’s third largest smartphone manufacturer. Lenovo occupies now the fifth place with a 4.6% share or around 45.5 million shipments in 2013. Lenovo plus Motorola would have a 6% share, according to Strategy Analytics. That would be enough to overtake Huawei (50.4 million units) and LG (47.6 million), for the third place after Samsung and Apple. Motorola’s CEO said in a statement that his company would be strengthened with the acquisition. He said: “With the recent launches of Moto X and Moto G, we have tremendous momentum right now and Lenovo’s hardware expertise and global reach will only help to accelerate this.”
The deal is yet to be approved by US and China regulators, so Lenovo needs to wait for a while to receive its third place medal.
Source: Google
