Right when Motorola was starting to make headway with its Moto X and Moto G smartphones, Google has decided to drop the bomb on the subsidiary and shift it over to Chinese electronics manufacturer Lenovo, for $2.91 billion.
For the past two years, Google has stuck by the decision to acquire Motorola Mobility in 2012 for $12.5 billion, even though the company has failed to make any profit and its patent portfolio failed to make the money Google was after.
Lenovo will take over the manufacturing side of Motorola, while Google will keep the patent portfolio. We are not sure what Lenovo will do with the company, whether they want to keep it independent or take over control.
Considering Lenovo has wanted to break into the U.S market for the past two years, we believe they will keep Motorola working on the Moto X and Moto G, considering the former sold 500,000 units in two months.
Google is making moves for Android neutrality and getting rid of Motorola may be one of them, allowing Lenovo to start competing against Samsung and HTC for market share worldwide.
Considering Google just signed a ten year patent agreement with Samsung, it looks like the company is trying to reign in the majority holder of Android from making too many customisations to Android.
This is a smart plan by Google, to make sure Samsung is kept in line with the standards, while also offering out more competition on Android. HTC and Sony have not been strong competitors like Lenovo undoubtably will be, if given the chance to strike the U.S market.
Lenovo also has a better shot at bringing down costs at Motorola, considering they run a tight shift on the PC side and continue to grow in both revenue and profits.
This is Lenovo’s second U.S acquisition in the past week, previously the Chinese company acquired IBM’s low-end x86 servers for around $2 billion.
