News - Google confirms that it's selling Motorola to Lenovo for $2.91bn

[HEXUS]

But the "vast majority" of Motorola Mobility patents will be kept by Google.

Read more.

[Dooms]

ThinkPad business windows phones? Hmmm I'm interested

[crossy]

Thought that Google getting into making handsets was a bit strange at the time. As the article says, the only thing it could possibly do is put the OEM's noses out of joint. In which case, I wonder if we'll see Microsoft selling their Nokia purchase in a couple of years?

Lenovo though? Wow, wouldn't have thought that they would have been in the frame. Then again, I didn't expect to see them on that list of Top 5 Smartphone Sales that was in a previous Hexus article.

But VentureBeat reported that its sources described some of Google's organisational decisions for Motorola as "surreal" and that Motorola never quite fit into Google. Examples such as Google reducing a 40 person team to a single person with the same productivity goals were given.

That last bit sounds like "US Business 101" - with a lot of companies trying to do the same. Although 40:1 seems a bit extreme - 3:1 or 4:1 seems to be more de rigeur.

I'd put my opinion of that as a practice, but I don't want to get banned for using excessive bad language.

[wasabi]

Makes sense for them to keep the patents and flog the manufacturing. IIRC they were bought back when Apple was at the peak of suing everything Android, so Google needed something to shore up the patent portfolio.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Makes sense for them to keep the patents and flog the manufacturing. IIRC they were bought back when Apple was at the peak of suing everything Android, so Google needed something to shore up the patent portfolio.

They are still doing it together with Microsoft but they are doing it a different way:

http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+and+M...ticle33987.htm

[kingpotnoodle]

Google bought up MM, sold off bits, stripped out what they wanted, gained some intelligence and are now flogging off the carcass to Lenovo. I don't think it was ever about profit, it was about the knowledge gained for Google... like some brain sucking alien that leaves a zombie behind.

Lenovo turned around IBM's Thinkpad business, presumably they think they can do the same for the the commodity servers and now MM, I wouldn't bet against them. Though with Dell going private and Lenovo's recent buys the market for commodity business IT equipment might get unusually interesting...

[cjs150]

So spent $12.5b so far got $4.9b from Motorola asset sales but kept the 8000 most valuable patents to bait Apple.

Jury is still out but long term I suspect this will turn out to have been a very good deal for Google