5 ms·
Only part of Motorola, and not generally the part considered the "original". :) Motorola mobility was spun off of the main company in January - I think at the
by ErrantX 15y ago
Only part of Motorola, and not generally the part considered the "original". :)
Motorola mobility was spun off of the main company in January - I think at the time there was commentary on the stock markets that it was done with the aim to get someone to buy it.
So Motorola will exist still - as Motorola Solutions (it is the bigger & more profitable part of the company anyway) and Google get a phone manufacture division under their control.
Interesting move.
- tpatke 15y agoI wonder how many patents were transferred to the new company. Motorola certainly has a lot and MSFT and Apple have been overpaying lately...
- Jabbles 15y agohttp://mediacenter.motorola.com/Press-Releases/Motorola-Mobility-Launches-as-Independent-Company-352b.aspx http://mediacenter.motorola.com/Press-Releases/Motorola-Mobi... http://www.unwiredview.com/2011/08/01/did-motorola-just-hint-they-are-ready-to-join-android-ip-racket-with-their-own-patent-fee-demands/ http://www.unwiredview.com/2011/08/01/did-motorola-just-hint... ~24,500 (~17000 Granted and ~7000 Pending)
- JulianMorrison 15y agoLooks to me like they bought patents with a phone hardware company thrown in.
- qw 15y agoThat number of patents is "proof" that the patent system is broken. I have nothing against patents, but they need to describe actual innovations. I have problems believing they had 24500 real innovations. If a company can produce 24500 patents, then most are not what I think of as innovations but just a result of standard engineering work.
- tybris 15y agoYou don't actually have to build something to file a patent. You just imagine what it might look like. You can do that pretty quickly.
- deadsy 15y agoA patent is a finite time period monopoly on the use/practice/sale of an invention. To innovate means to introduce something new. The two concepts aren't the same. E.g. You can patent something economically useless, you can patent something and not build it. As a practical matter its not clear to me if you can or should require patents to be linked to innovations.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- hammock 15y agoThey did it for the patents. Larry Page: "Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies." Seems like the best jobs at Google will soon be the lawyers, not the engineers.
- sunchild 15y agoMany patent lawyers are engineers.
- hammock 15y agoMost of them come from an engineering background (at least education), you're right. It's fascinating to me to see this shift, which Google seems to be leading, from tech companies fighting over new product development - and spending gobs of cash on it - to something entirely different: fighting over patents (and again, spending gobs of cash on it). Where a company spends its cash is a good measure of where its priorities are, and I'm not sure what that says about Google.
- 18pfsmt 15y ago"It's fascinating to me to see this shift, which Google seems to be leading, from tech companies fighting over new product development...to something entirely different: fighting over patents " I thought it was Microsoft and Apple that were aggressively filing patent lawsuits, and Google and other Android partners were on the receiving end, no? One other thing I don't see being mentioned anywhere in these threads is that, "Motorola Mobility held $5.5B in cash and deferred tax assets; this could put Google's (GOOG) real purchase price around $7B."[1] [1]http://seekingalpha.com/article/278932-can-motorola-mobility-be-sustainably-profitable http://seekingalpha.com/article/278932-can-motorola-mobility...
- zacharypinter 15y agoThat's what I find interesting about this deal. It's still motivated by patent protection, but instead of putting it all in a defensive patent portfolio, they get a hardware company to innovate with as well.
- ristretto 15y agoWhat is there under $12 billion? 17000 patents, but how many employees, and what sales stats?
- lurker14 15y agoWhat exactly is "Motorola Mobile" and what is the rest of Motorala? I saw that in the news headline and figured there was going to be a lot of confusion over what actually got bought.
- iam 15y agoMotorola spun off into Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions. Think of Mobility as the classic consumer oriented Motorola who sells cell phones. Solutions targets enterprise/government.
- ConstantineXVI 15y agoThey're roughly broken down as follows: Moto Mobile: general consumer devices (phones, tablets, GPS nav, DSL/cable modems, IPTV boxes, etc.) Moto Solutions: enterprise and industrial stuff (2-way radios, RFID, barcode scanners, networking)
- te_chris 15y agoI think a lot of people are missing that they make stuff like DSL modems and IPTV too. If I was google I'd be interested in having a piece of that too.
- ristretto 15y agoIn a few years we will have Motorola vs Nokia under new names, Google vs Microsoft. Apple will still hold strong onto their upper 5%.