However, if looked at closely, Google didn’t lose money with that deal.
It’s much bigger than that
Selling Motorola, Google keeps all the important patents which were the main reason to buy Motorola in first place. All other 2,000 patents will go over to Lenovo, including a licence for the remaining ones. So including the $3B from Lenovo, they recouped approximately $10.4B of the initial $12.5B purchase price.” – absherwin, Hacker News It’s also noteworthy that Google is planning to sign a patent-exchange deal with Samsung, which might have played a role in the Motorola deal. By handing over Motorola to Lenovo, Google might just have started an attack Apple’s position on the Chinese smartphone market. Lenovo already has a strong presence in Asia and will be more capable to fight Apple in the battle to take over the Chinese market, since the company is now a bigger part of the Android ecosystem, while Google sits back and observes. Well played, Google.
