Google Moves Into Mobile Hardware By Buying Motorola

Google has already tried to push Android development by co-operating with other manufacturers to produce flagship handsets in the Nexus range, but it's no secret that the company hasn't always been pleased with the results.  But according to a posting on the company's blog, it's found a new solution.

Google doesn't normally buy established companies.  Most of the time, the boys from Mountain View look for promising start-ups, snap them up and give them the resources they need to develop a finished product.  Their biggest rival, Apple, has often used a similar strategy.

It seems that competition in the smartphone market is so intense that Google has needed to take more decisive action and buy Motorola Mobility, a former heavyweight—and indeed, market leader—in mobile phones.

Motorola's glory days are long gone, and things have been going downhill ever since it failed to capitalise on the success of its RAZR range.  The huge popularity of smartphones has proved just too much for the company, and despite having some interesting ideas on handsets like the Motorola Defy, the Motorola Milestone and the Atrix, it's found it hard to keep up with the likes of Apple, Samsung and HTC.

Motorola: not just mobiles

But if you take a closer look at Motorola's back catalogue, the motivation behind the purchase becomes even clearer, especially if you consider the EULAs it has rights to.  Although the firm emphasises its smartphones and tablets, it also has a lot of knowledge of IP-based technologies in a multimedia context, which could certainly help get Google TV back on the right track.  That's not counting the 17 000 different patents owned by the firm that Motorola was hoping to use to take on some of its Android-based rivals.

The purchase has been made via an offer that will be difficult to resist: Google is offering $40 a share, around 40% more than the currently-quoted price, which has been around the $24 mark.  That comes to a total of 12.5 billion dollars.

Google's blog posting emphasises its desire to see that Android remains an open platform, which is something that will become clear in time.  For the moment though, we can only say that next February's MWC in Barcelona looks set to be very busy ...

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