BEIJING: Lenovo has bought mobile phone manufacturer Motorola from Google in ‘just’ $2.9 billion only as the latter purchased it in $12.5 billion three years ago.
Not all of the money will be going into Google’s coffers right away, however. Lenovo is paying $660m in cash plus $750m in newly issued stock, and has signed a promissory note to deliver the remaining $1.5bn sometime in the next three years.
“Motorola is in great hands with Lenovo, a company that’s all-in on making great devices,” said Google boss Larry Page.
That’s not the whole story, of course. One of the main reasons Google bought Motorola was to get hold of the firm’s patent library. Motorola invented the first commercially available mobile phone and it had a huge wodge of patents that Google felt it needed to fend off attacks against Android and its other properties.
Under the terms of its deal with Lenovo, Google keeps the vast majority of Motorola’s patents, although the mobile firm will bring around 2,000 of them to Lenovo. Motorola also has a license to use the patents Google is retaining, and any earlier patent cross-licensing deals between the companies will remain in place.
