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Industry Trends

Google Buys Motorola Mobility

By August 16, 2011July 30th, 2023One Comment

It has been recently announced that Google is all set to buy over Motorola Mobility.

Motorola Mobility will however be run as a separate business by Google. It will function as a licensee of Android and the Android OS will continue to remain an open source.

Motorola had been one of the founding members of the Open Handset Alliance, and by 2008 had eventually made Android its sole operating system for all their smartphone devices.

While the handset manufacturing division of Motorola has not been doing too well for some time, it could be their vast collection of patents that attracted Google to buy the company.

Motorola has already got 17,000 patents, while another 7,500 patents are pending.

Google on the other hand is on the lookout for patents in order to compete with Microsoft, RIM and others.

A note on the Google Blog said, “Motorola’s total commitment to Android in mobile devices is one of many reasons that there is a natural fit between our two companies.

Google CEO Larry Page and Google’s senior VP of mobile Andy Rubin have both confirmed that the primary reason for buying over Motorola mobility is to get hold of their patents to strengthen Android.

Andy Rubin has also stated that the deal would in no way be a disadvantage to Google’s over 50 other partners.

Google will be paying $12.5 billion for this deal. The deal is subject to regulatory approval from various bodies in the US, the European Union and other jurisdictions, and the approval of Motorola Mobility’s stock holders.