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Bloomberg: Google has announced that it will purchase smartphone manufacturer Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion or $40 per share. That’s a 63 percent premium over Motorola Mobility’s closing stock price last Friday. If the deal goes through, it would be the biggest wireless hardware deal in a decade.
With the purchase, Google will expand its presence in the mobile hardware space, and it also gains more than 17,000 patents that it can use to defend itself in the ongoing mobile patent wars. “The combination of the two companies is going to create tremendous shareholder value, drive great user experiences and accelerate innovation,” said Google CEO Larry Page. “Motorola also has a strong patent portfolio, which will help protect Android from anticompetitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.”
