Google Acquires Motorola For A Cool 12.5 Billion
New partnership to enhance competition and offer consumers innovation.
Case of the Mondays? This should wake you up.
Just a few minutes ago, Google CEO Larry Page (via his blog) announced the company's deal to purchase smart phone giant Motorola for 12.5 billion, which equates to $40 per share.
Page cited Motorola's 80 years of products, including the world's first portable cell phone that debuted almost 30 years ago.
Of course, there's more to this acquisition than a long history of mobile devices. Motorola's decision to use Android exclusively is the major factor. Said Page, "Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers everywhere."
That said, Google will continue to run Android as an open platform. In fact, Motorola will remain a licensee of Android and Google will run the company as a separate business.
The deal also came about due to Apple and Microsoft's patent attacks against Android, which Page elaborated on.
"The U.S. Department of Justice had to intervene in the results of one recent patent auction to "protect competition and innovation in the open source software community" and it is currently looking into the results of the Nortel auction. Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google's patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies."
Bottom line, the handheld war is about to get even more interesting.