Google sells Motorola to Lenovo for $2.91 billion

"Lenovo has the expertise and track record to scale Motorola Mobility into a major player within the Android ecosystem," Google CEO Larry Page says in a statement. "This move will enable Google to devote our energy to driving innovation across the Android ecosystem, for the benefit of smartphone users everywhere."

Google initially bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion back in 2012, but it said at the time that it was mainly interested in the company's patent portfolio. Now, Google is offloading its subsidiary's handset business, which has been losing hundreds of millions each quarter since the purchase. Google previously sold off Motorola's set-top box unit for over $2 billion.

Though patents are a large part of what drew Google's interest to Motorola in the first place, those patents haven't been as helpful as Google initially hoped. Google appears to have highly overvalued Motorola's portfolio, which hasn't been able to bring in nearly as much in royalties as either company seemingly expected.

Lenovo has been vocal about its intention to move into the US market this year. Though it hasn't actively pushed its own devices in the United States, it did make a bid for BlackBerry late last year. Though its offer was blocked, picking up Motorola's device unit could give it an even stronger start. It would mark Lenovo's second acquisition announcement this month: just last week it announce that it reached a deal to buy IBM's x86 server business.

News of Lenovo's acquisition of Motorola comes just a day before Google reports its quarterly earnings. Investors have been interested to know what Google plans to do about Motorola's mounting losses. Tomorrow may not deliver them good news from the previous quarter, but news of a sale could be Google's final answer.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/29/5358620/lenovo-reportedly-buying-motorola-mobility-from-google