Update: confirmed by Google that Lenovo has bought Motorola Mobile. Google will hold the IPRs and it will have the 5% of Lenovo.
Google is for sure a Market Mover in the recent days because of its acquisition, but now it seems that the reason is the possibility to sell Motorola to Lenovo that in the last days has been another important player in the Market.
Lenovo in fact, already Last Thursday announced it would spend $2.3 billion to buy IBM’s x86 server business now it seems to make another goal with Motorola. It seems that a deal is expected to be announced shortly for about $3 billion in cash, stock and a deferred payment from Lenovo to Google.
The “old” Motorola Inc was split on 2008 in two branches: Motorola Mobility focused on cell phone and cable television equipment company spun off into an independent company at beginning of 2011 and acquired by Google for a huge amount of $12.5 billion. Motorola Solutions (NYSE:MSI) focused on Government and Enterprise Business , that is considered the direct successor of Motorola, Inc. because of the previous mentioned spun off of Motorola Mobility. Network part was also sold to NSN (Nokia Solutions and Networks formerly Nokia Siemens Networks).
The sum spent for Motorola in these 2 years raises several questions, because only in last time some new smartphones with a certain appeal was announced as Moto X and Moto G, but for sure the $ 12.5 billions are not so justified neither with such products nor with IPRs.
Moto X
If the deal with Lenovo will be finalized, it is in my opinion an important step for the Chinese Company and not only for an acquisition for $3 Billion of a Company bought by Google with 12.5 $ Billion just less than 3 years ago. It is some time, following some rumors, that Lenovo is interested to improve its presence in Mobile sector and the brand Motorola, well known and not yet fully in decline could help so much Lenovo in such adventure.
In the meantime Lenovo, after IBM’s x86 server, and I want just remember that Lenovo already bought IBM PCs including the ThinkPad Series in 2004 with a very remarkable success in these years, has reorganized its business with some interesting aspects if we consider possible Motorola Mobility acquisition, as from Wall Street Journal, in the new structure, Lenovo will have four business groups:
PC, Mobile, Enterprise and an Ecosystem-and-cloud group that focuses on content and services for the company’s user base.
The interesting part is the Mobile sector that seems ready to take Motorola Business. I think that, if Lenovo will buy Motorola Mobility, the brand of course will be more Chinese than US based but if the approach will be the same for PC we could hope in good high-end phones (as ThinkPad in PCs) and good and affordable feature or low-end phones (as the IdeaPad or Yoga in PCs).
So will see if it is time for a Lenovo MicroTac.
HTGadgets 