Google gives up and dumps Motorola

[mike123abc]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles...4579351163997405806?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

Google Inc.'s experiment making Motorola phones has ended after just 22 months, with the company unloading the handset business to China's Lenovo Group Inc. for $2.91 billion but keeping a valuable trove of patents.

The deal unwinds the Internet company's costly move into smartphone hardware after it acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in May 2012. Google has struggled to compete in the cutthroat phone-hardware business—its share of the world-wide smartphone market fell to about 1% last year from 2.3% a year earlier, according to IDC.

Google said it will retain the vast majority of Motorola's patent portfolio, a key motivation of the original transaction that lets it defend those phone makers who use its Android software against patent suits. Google's Android software powers the majority of the world's smartphones.

Ouch taking a 9+ billion dollar haircut. I know they are keeping patents but that is a lot to pay.

 

[mike123abc]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/01/29/google-selling-motorola-lenovo/5035673/

A free article

 

[John Kotches]

At the time of the purchase it was pretty clear that this was about the patent portfolio. The handset business was not high on their list of priorities.

They did however come up with 2 outstanding phones, the Moto X and the Moto G.

 

[mike123abc]

At the time of the purchase it was pretty clear that this was about the patent portfolio. The handset business was not high on their list of priorities.

They did however come up with 2 outstanding phones, the Moto X and the Moto G.

But, it turned out that the patent portfolio did not do much for them since the patents were all fair and reasonable licensed patents used in standards.

 

[Peter Parker]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles...4579351163997405806?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories



Ouch taking a 9+ billion dollar haircut. I know they are keeping patents but that is a lot to pay.

They had sold off pieces before so the hairct is not that drastic. Still it is a loss.

 

[GaryPen]

At the time of the purchase it was pretty clear that this was about the patent portfolio. The handset business was not high on their list of priorities.

They did however come up with 2 outstanding phones, the Moto X and the Moto G.

Yeah. It's a shame. The Moto X is actually "Googlier" than the Nexus 5.

I like Lenovo, for the most part. But, I doubt very much they will continue in the direction Motorola was going, which had finally started to show Google's influence.

 

[mike123abc]

They had sold off pieces before so the hairct is not that drastic. Still it is a loss.

True they are only taking a 7 billion write down on it. You had the purchase price a couple billion thrown in to try to restructure, quarterly losses, but they sold the settop box part and now the phone part.

http://www.dailytech.com/Google+to+...o+for+291B+Takes+7B+Net+Loss/article34231.htm

 

[GaryPen]

But, it turned out that the patent portfolio did not do much for them since the patents were all fair and reasonable licensed patents used in standards.

The patents were to keep patent trolls like Apple from suing them ad infinitum. They weren't for anything new or forward moving.

 

[mike123abc]

The patents were to keep patent trolls like Apple from suing them ad infinitum. They weren't for anything new or forward moving.

That is what they had planned on, but the EU had no part of it. The Motorola patents were covered under standards and had to be licensed at fair and reasonable prices, unlike the Apple patents that were not part of any cell phone standard and did not have to be licensed at all, much less at a reasonable rate.

http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/05/preliminary-eu-ruling-finds-googles.html

The European Commission announced today that it sent a Statement of Objections ("SO"), a preliminary antitrust ruling, to Google's Motorola Mobility, following more than a year of formal investigations based on a complaint lodged by Apple in February 2012 over alleged abuse of cellular standard-essential patents (SEPs). Samsung had already received an SO over alleged SEP abuse in December 2012.

 

[GaryPen]

That is what they had planned on, but the EU had no part of it. The Motorola patents were covered under standards and had to be licensed at fair and reasonable prices, unlike the Apple patents that were not part of any cell phone standard and did not have to be licensed at all, much less at a reasonable rate.

http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/05/preliminary-eu-ruling-finds-googles.html

That's seems different. It looks like Google was told they can't use those patents to sue, as they are industry standards. They never bought those patents to sue others, only to protect themselves from patent trolls.

It's quite ironic, and pretty hypocritical, that it was Apple who brought that up, as a company with quite a bit of history suing others for patent infringement over what are essentially industry standards.

 

[mike123abc]

That's seems different. It looks like Google was told they can't use those patents to sue, as they are industry standards. They never bought those patents to sue others, only to protect themselves from patent trolls.

It's quite ironic, and pretty hypocritical, that it was Apple who brought that up, as a company with quite a bit of history suing others for patent infringement over what are essentially industry standards.

Yeah it is a bad deal for Google. Their acquired patents had to be licensed to Apple at a fair and reasonable rate, but Apple could sue them and go for anything they wanted.