Citing anticompetitive patent litigation from Microsoft and Apple, Google will acquire handset maker Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, a 63 percent premium over the stock’s Friday close. More than the once dominant Motorola’s shrinking worldwide market share, Google is buying Motorola’s nearly 25,000 patents to bolster Android in the increasingly litigious smartphone wars.
It’s an interesting move, one that can only be seen as a defensive acknowledgement that Google’s mobile operating system isn’t faring well in the courts. And it will be interesting to see how owning its own Android handset manufacture will impact Google’s ability to license Android to Motorola’s competitors.
Sorry, but Apple did the exact same thing back in 2008 when they spent 4.5 billion for Nortell patents. Otherwise they too would be on the losing end of a series of patent lawsuits, which most would agree, needs to be reformed.
@1, Um, it was like two months ago that the Nortel patents were purchased, and it was a consortium of companies including Apple and Microsoft. Google was reportedly invited to join the consortium, but instead chose to bid, unsuccessfully, on its own.
That said, I don’t disagree that patent law needs to be reformed. And I don’t think Apple would either.
Pretty sure it was 2 years ago when the purchased was announced (Well, a bidding war), it only recently did it pass anti-trust regulatory approval.
Goldy, you are wrong in your comment @2.
Google was reportedly invited to join the group bidding for the NOVELL patents, not the NORTEL patents.
“one that can only be seen as a defensive acknowledgement that Google’s mobile operating system isn’t faring well in the courts”
Disagree. I think this is about Google going with a more vertically-integrated approach to the smartphone market. Right now, all they get is the OS royalities; if they’re producing the entire product, their margins (theoretically) go way up.