Back in August of last year, Google acquired Motorola Mobility, the mobile division of Motorolla, for $12.5 Billion in cash in one of their biggest acquisitions yet. As with any acquisitions of this size from a public company, the deal first has to be approved by regulators. One of the last to approve the deal was the Chinese government today and Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick confirmed the news with the Associated Press.
This is great news as there has been some concern as to whether or not the deal would actually be approved. Google owning Motorola Mobility will give them the ability to work even more closely with future Android smartphones and devices, among other things. While they boosted smartphone sales by 24%, they did lose $86 Million in Q1, though revenue is solid at $3.08 Billion.
Now that Google will for sure own the company, it’s going to be interesting to see how they work them compared to say Samsung who accounts for 40% of all Android smartphone sales. One of the concerns with actually approving the deal was preferential treatment. One of the biggest reasons the tech giant acquired Motorola Mobility wasn’t for it’s devices, but for the fact that they own 17,000 patents and have thousands of pending patent applications, many related to smartphone technology of course.
Either way, good news for Google moving forward and to also help protect manufacturers from the onslaught of patent lawsuits from Apple. We all know that’s not going to be slowing down any time in the near future.