Google Sells Motorola To Lenovo

In a major turnaround, Google is selling Motorola to Lenovo for $2.91 billion, in a mixture of cash and stock. Lenovo plans to use Motorola to gain a major foothold in the American market, an arena that it’s struggling to break into. That said, Lenovo is certainly a company on the rise, having shipped 45 million smartphones in 2013, a 90% year-over-year growth. Google is framing the move as a way to craft a better Android ecosystem for all devices, not just Motorola, while holding on to Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group. The move seems to take the more ‘basic’ handset business – which has been hemorrhaging money since acquired – and dumps the load on others while Google gets to work with the higher-end patents and technology. For Lenovo, it’s very much in line with its past moves, such as purchasing ThinkPad from IBM in 2005. So while Lenovo gets the handsets, Google gets to keep all the patents and high-tech research. A win-win? We’ll just have to see.