Google is selling Motorola Mobility’s smartphone business to Lenovo Group for $2.9 billion.
In his blog post published today, Google CEO Larry Page, believes that Motorola will be better served by Lenovo—which has a rapidly growing smartphone business and is the largest (and fastest-growing) PC manufacturer in the world so that Google can devote its energy to driving innovation across the Android ecosystem, for the benefit of smartphone users everywhere.
“Lenovo has the expertise and track record to scale Motorola into a major player within the Android ecosystem. They have a lot of experience in hardware, and they have global reach” says Larry. In addition, Lenovo intends to keep Motorola’s distinct brand identity—just as they did when they acquired ThinkPad from IBM in 2005.
Google intends to retain the vast majority of Motorola’s patents, which it will continue to use to defend the entire Android ecosystem.
Google bought the Motorola division in 2012 for $12.5 billion. This sale signifies a loss of $9.6 billion
