Back in 2010, before Google had announced it was buying Motorola for $12.5 billion, Lenovo attempted to buy Motorola. We learned this morning from Lenovo’s CEO Yuanqing Yang this morning during a press conference in China. Basically, Lenovo wanted to buy Motorola Mobility back in 2010, when there was Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility. Lenovo’s CEO and CFO both flew out to Motorola’s headquarters here in the US and asked to speak with the CEO. But they asked to talk to the wrong guy. They spoke with Motorola Solutions CEO Greg Brown instead of Motorola Mobility’s CEO Sanjay Jha. So naturally, they didn’t get anywhere.
Once Lenovo, and the rest of the world learned that Google was spending $12.5 billion on Motorola, Yuanqing Yang invited Google’s Eric Schmidt to his house for dinner, in which they discussed possible cooperation between the two companies. Yang told Schmidt that if Google ever decided to sell Motorola, that Lenovo would be interested. Fast forward, to about 2-months ago when Yang got an email from Eric Schmidt asking “Are you still interested in Motorola?” In which I’m sure Yang started jumping up and down like a little girl in excitement.
Obviously the deal still has to get approved by shareholders and such. But since Lenovo is a relatively small player in smartphones in the US, and Motorola is pretty small in China, it should be approved without any issues. Yang also told the press this morning that he is happy with the current Motorola product portfolio and that they will keep their main product lines, which are the Moto X, Moto G and DROID Ultra. Well they kind of don’t really have a choice about keeping the DROID line, unless they want to piss off Verizon. Which is kind of the whole point of buying Motorola, is for those carrier relationships.
Source: Unwired View, Sina Tech