Google will buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, the internet giant has announced. Google justifies its investment in Motorola as an effort to “protect Android and its eco-system” from Apple, Microsoft and others.
Motorola, though being part of Google after acquisition, will continue working as a separate operation unit and won’t be getting any special treatment over other Android licensee handset makers like HTC, Samsung, LG and several others.
Motorola Mobility had sole license of Android operating system and churned out commendable hardware. Despite of having top hardware and Android as the operating system, Motorola Mobility had always faced troubles in terms of sales numbers. The company had faced tough times in past and Google has held its hand.
Larry Page, the chief executive officer of Google, said that Motorola has hardware competency and will operate as separate unit. The deal is about protecting and accelerating the growth of Android.
Google seems more interested in the 17,000 patents owned and 7,500 pending patents from Motorola Mobility. And post-acquisition, Google indeed would be making best of all those patents in future devices – smartphones, tablets and set-top box devices.
Now the biggest question arises about Google’s next Android smartphone, supposedly named as the Nexus Prime, which will sport the Ice Cream Sandwich update. For Nexus S, Google is said to have chosen Texas Instruments’ top OMAP4 SoC Chipset as lead platform already.
Andy Rubin, head for Google Android, said, “Every year we pick a lead partner to work with on a device. We don’t expect that to change at all. Motorola will be part of that bidding process, run as a separate company.”
Motorola has shipped 4.4 million smartphones and 440,000 tablets in the second quarter of 2011. The company is already rumoured to be working on a Xoom successor tablet that has 4:3 aspect ratio based portrait orientation like the Apple iPad 2.
It is no remain to be seen, if the deal goes through, how Google will make the best of the Motorola patents for its future Android updates.
Google is expected to complete the transaction of acquiring Motorola Mobility by the end of this year.