No more Moto X line?

[Evo 5oh]

I read that Google selling Motorola Company to the Chinese so No more Moto x

is this going to happen for real?

Im a shareholder =/

 

[doogald]

I read that Google selling Motorola Company to the Chinese so No more Moto x

is this going to happen for real?

Im a shareholder =/

Google has reached an agreement to sell Motorola Mobility to Lenovo. Lenovo says that they are not going to stop development of smartphones - they already make their own branded smartphones in China, and plan to continue using the Motorola trademark in the Americas.

Nobody knows for sure what will happen going forward. But Lenovo bought IBM's personal computer brand in 2005 (they just bought the IBM Intel-based server business in the last few days - Lenovo has been very busy.). They are still making Thinkpad laptops. Also, this deal still need to be approved by US and Chinese regulators. The Google purchase of Motorola was announced in August 2011, approved by US and EU regulators in early 2012, and by China in May 2012, with the deal being done shortly after that. So, it took about 9 months to close. By then I assume that Motorola will be releasing, or will have already released, the successor to the X. I can't believe that Google will risk shutting down any new development at Motorola on the chance that regulators do not approve the acquisition, nor that Lenovo would want them to.

 

[mplevy]

As doogald noted, Lenovo has bought the IP from other companies and continued development of those products in line with how they were previously being developed. The Thinkpad laptops are a GREAT example of that. I don't see the Motorola brand going away and can only see it improving. Lenovo may even be keeping much of the Motorola business structure in place, including MOST of the R&D (Advanced Technology and Projects group is staying with Google, including Ara which is the "modular" phone concept).

 

[BlueIce5249]

Everyone's reaction is valid, BUT the Moto X will BARELY be impacted, if AT ALL. People need to remember, this isn't like an ebay sale. Google can't just sell Motorola to Lenovo, wipe its hands clean, and walk away the next day. This type of thing has to go through A TON of government channels and political red tape before it can be finalized. My guess is, we won't see any real changes that impact the consumer for about a year.By that time, the Moto X would be on its way to retirement anyways.

The real question, however, is what does Google have up their sleeve? Think about it, within a week we get rumors that Nexus is dead and then they sell Motorola for a fraction of what they bought it for.

What did they not sell? A bunch of patents and Project Ara. This could mean that Google is looking to pursue Project Ara further and push that out!

 

[doogald]

Everyone's reaction is valid, BUT the Moto X will BARELY be impacted, if AT ALL. People need to remember, this isn't like an ebay sale. Google can't just sell Motorola to Lenovo, wipe its hands clean, and walk away the next day. This type of thing has to go through A TON of government channels and political red tape before it can be finalized. My guess is, we won't see any real changes that impact the consumer for about a year.By that time, the Moto X would be on its way to retirement anyways.

It's not just that - these deals don't happen on a whim. Deals like this take weeks, if not months, of negotiations. This deal has been happening in the background while Motorola has continued to deliver a new phone (the G), and provide KitKat updates to three different brands before any other non-Google phone brand received them.

The real question, however, is what does Google have up their sleeve? Think about it, within a week we get rumors that Nexus is dead and then they sell Motorola for a fraction of what they bought it for.

This has been covered elsewhere, but the $12.5 billion is not a hard number. Motorola came with $3 billion in cash assets and $1 billion ix tax credits, so the initial sale was really $8.5 billion. Google sold the old Motorola Solutions set-top box part of Motorola for $2.4 billion shortly after the sale. With the $2.9 billion sale of Motorola Mobility, that's a loss of $3.2 billion (plus about $1 to $1.5 billion in losses in the 2 years that Google owned the business.)

But, that last part in parentheses is probably the real reason. Why should Google throw away hundreds of millions of dollars of profit a year when that's not their primary business? I think the key to this deal was the announcement the day earlier that Google and Samsung entered into a patent licensing deal that includes Samsung's promise to develop a more close-to-stock version of Android for their devices without replacement apps for Google services.

 

[BlueIce5249]

It's not just that - these deals don't happen on a whim. Deals like this take weeks, if not months, of negotiations. This deal has been happening in the background while Motorola has continued to deliver a new phone (the G), and provide KitKat updates to three different brands before any other non-Google phone brand received them.



This has been covered elsewhere, but the $12.5 billion is not a hard number. Motorola came with $3 billion in cash assets and $1 billion ix tax credits, so the initial sale was really $8.5 billion. Google sold the old Motorola Solutions set-top box part of Motorola for $2.4 billion shortly after the sale. With the $2.9 billion sale of Motorola Mobility, that's a loss of $3.2 billion (plus about $1 to $1.5 billion in losses in the 2 years that Google owned the business.)

But, that last part in parentheses is probably the real reason. Why should Google throw away hundreds of millions of dollars of profit a year when that's not their primary business? I think the key to this deal was the announcement the day earlier that Google and Samsung entered into a patent licensing deal that includes Samsung's promise to develop a more close-to-stock version of Android for their devices without replacement apps for Google services.

Perhaps its just wishful thinking, but I think there's more to this than just that. I don't think it's coincidence they sold Lenovo everything except a bunch of patents and the Advance Tech and Projects part of Motorola (Especially Project Ara). Again though, that's just wishful thinking for me.

I have very little faith in Samsung putting out stock Android (or anything close) anytime soon, if ever. That whole deal between Google and Samsung was just to keep Samsung from creating their own OS. Thus, leaving Google without the most popular maker of Android handsets. IMO.

 

[timelord65]

yeah but this all sucks. Everyone got so enthused when we heard that Motorola was bought by Google. Now just a short while later, Google goes and sells Motorola. Here we all were hoping for another Google like experience similar to the Nexus line. Now all that is out the window.

Also when Google first acquired Motorola. there was quite a lull before they produced a phone. So in the interem, I wouldn't expect much more out of google/motorola

 

[Rxpert83]

Also when Google first acquired Motorola. there was quite a lull before they produced a phone. So in the interem, I wouldn't expect much more out of google/motorola

It takes a LONG time to develop a phone, manufacture it, and bring it to market.

Google had 18 months of product pipeline to get through before the motox was released. They were still releasing phones, but they were phones being developed before the google purchase. Those didn't get scrapped, they continued them. The droid razor maxx HD and the droid razor m are examples of that.

There's not really a reason to expect anything different this time around.

Its entirely possible for the next 18 months you'll continue to see google inspired products.