Lenovo Buys Motorola for $2.9 Billion

Earlier this month we told you that Lenovo was interested in making a second attempt at buying BlackBerry after the deal was shot down way back in October 2013. In a surprising turn of events, Lenovo has acquired a major company, just not the one we expected.

Lenovo has purchased Motorola from Google for $2.9 billion, far less than the $12.4 billion that Google paid for the company back in 2012. Google tried to return Motorola to its former glory but just couldn’t do it, so now it’s Lenovo’s turn to step up to the plate. With the purchase, the Beijing-based PC producer have now elevated themselves to the world’s third largest smartphone producer. Lenovo wanted a quick way into the market and that’s exactly what they found, along with around 2,000 patents and several patent cross-licensing deals.

Rick Osterloh will remain as President of Motorola Mobility and the company will retain its Chicago headquarters and hopefully all of its 3,500 employees. It seems that Motorola will largely stay the same, except now they’re a fully-owned subsidiary of a Chinese-based company. Lenovo expects to sell about 100 million devices this year, doing what Google couldn’t and breathing new life into the company. It’s worth noting that Google never really seemed to push Motorola that hard, so bringing them back to what they once were might not be that difficult.

The question now is, with their purchase of Motorola, is Lenovo no longer interesed in BlackBerry? Or are they looking to pick them up too, further cementing their presence in the smartphone world?

via RT