Goodbye, Moto: Lenovo nabs Motorola from Google

Motorola Mobility has been sold by Google to Chinese company Lenovo for a tasty £2.91 billion.

After just two years of ownership, Google is offloading Motorola onto Chinese manufacturer Lenovo, for almost $10 billion less than it originally paid. The current line of Motorola products, including the great-value Moto G and the freshly-launched Moto X, will pass onto Lenovo after the $2.91 billion acquisition.

This deal seems to be a good move for all companies involved. Google purchased Motorola in August 2011 for $12.5 billion, in what appeared to be a move for Motorola’s vast collection of patents and its advanced technology division. Google will retain these bits while offloading the rest onto Lenovo, a seemingly shrewd move given that Motorola was losing Google money (a $248 million loss in the last quarter alone – although admittedly that’s probably less than Google spends on toilet paper).

On the other side, Lenovo gains a household mobile name which has recently released two very well-received handsets. Lenovo has voiced its desire to be a big player in the smartphone world, and releasing future handsets under the Motorola monicker in the Western world seems like a cunning plan to make that dream a reality. Lenovo’s grand target is to shift 100 million mobiles a year, according to CEO Yang Yuanqing.

“The acquisition of such an iconic brand, innovative product portfolio and incredibly talented global team will immediately make Lenovo a strong global competitor in smartphones,” said Yuanqing after the announcement. “We will immediately have the opportunity to become a strong global player in the fast-growing mobile space. We are confident that we can bring together the best of both companies to deliver products customers will love and a strong, growing business.”

The sale is most likely good news for Motorola too, who we’re expecting to see a lot more from in the near future. And now the press team won’t have to hold in their frothy rage, every time they get asked how their latest handset compares to the Nexus phones.