Roughly 8 months ago, Google announced their intent to purchase Motorla Mobility for $12.5 billion. Since then we’ve been waiting for governments around the world to green light the acquisition, and nearly everyone has signed off on the deal, except for China. Google’s official statement regarding the reasoning behind the purchase of Motorola Mobility has always about one thing: patents. What most people forget to consider is that Motorola Mobility also has roughly 20,000 employees spread out across 90+ countries. What’s Google going to do with them? According to The Wall Street Journal, no one is giving a straight answer to that question. Some say Google is going to try and rebuild Motorola and make them a serious competitor in the smartphone space. Others say Google is going to be as hands off with Motorola as possible so that other Android handset makers don’t feel like Google is playing favorites. The most interesting rumor however is one out of Asia. Sources say the search giant might sell Motorola’s handset unit to Huawei.
Chances are you’ve heard of Lenovo, the world’s second largest PC maker. They’re well on their way to overtake HP. How did they get so big? Back in 2004, IBM sold their PC division to Lenovo, who no one knew at the time. Why do I bother bringing this up? Because Huawei is in the right position to do the exact same thing here. Buy Motorola Mobility, leverage their brand assets, and then quickly become a leader in the smartphone space.
This is all speculation of course, but we seriously hope it happens. Huawei has the talent and the ambition, and Motorola has the experience and the relationships. We can’t think of a better pairing. And let’s be honest with ourselves, the Huawei brand is both hard to pronounce and ugly at the same time. Motorola on the other hand, beautiful.