Google's Motorola Adventure: Stinging Defeat, Or Semi-Victory? 139
Nerval's Lobster writes "Google had previously sold Motorola's Home division for $2.4 billion. Combine that with yesterday's $2.91 billion sale of Motorola's remaining assets, subtract the $12.5 billion acquisition price for the company back in 2011, and Google's little smartphone adventure cost it roughly $7.1 billion even before you start throwing in expenses related to actual production, marketing, and personnel. That's a hefty chunk of change, but some analysts think the deal was ultimately a good one because it allowed Google to pick up patents, engineering talent, and insight into the mobile-device marketplace. It's debatable, however, whether those patents ultimately helped Android in the still-raging smartphone wars, and Google was slow to promote Motorola smartphones out of fear of irritating other Android manufacturers. At least Google can console itself with the thought that so many of its other acquisitions—including YouTube and DoubleClick—resulted in massive profits; but you can't hit a home run every time you step up to bat."
Re:How About, Pointless Waste. (Score:0, Interesting)
what was an important American technology company/division.
No - what was a FAILING American technology company.
Speaking of pointless wastes...
Like your entire post?
Samsung (Score:5, Interesting)
http://gigaom.com/2014/01/29/report-samsung-to-hold-the-touchwiz-on-future-android-devices/ [gigaom.com]
Re:it went exactly as planned (Score:4, Interesting)
I think they got rid of the handset division as fast as the tax law would allow. Take a look at this way.
Motorola (M) could get a higher price is they sold their business as a packaged deal, Motorola Mobility (MM). They got more bidders that way. (It’s not exactly what they did, but it was effectively what they did when they spun off that division.)
Google wanted the patents but not the hardware division for the reason you mentioned but they had to buy both. They wanted to get rid of it as fast as possible.
Assuming MM was spun off from M in a tax free spin off, one normally has to wait about 2 years before one can sell off a division. If it was sold off before then it would trigger a big tax bill for MM. Most spin off require the spun off division to pay their parent’s tax bill if they are bought out.
So we wait 2 years and 6 months and guess what happens – Google sells off the handset division.
Re:Samsung (Score:4, Interesting)