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Google selling Motorola unit

January 30, 2014

Google has announced it is selling its Motorola Mobility's smartphone business to Lenovo for $2.9 billion (2.1 billion euros). Motorola has been struggling ever since the Internet giant took over in 2012.

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Google sells Motorola unit | Journal - The News Program on DW

Google Inc. announced Wednesday it had signed a deal to sell its struggling smartphone unit Motorola to Chinese tech giant Lenovo for $2.91 billion.

However, Google is keeping most of Motorola's patent portfolio, which it bought along with the phone business for $12.4 billion in May 2012. The sale was Google's biggest takeover in the Internet giant's 15-year history.

Since then, Motorola has lost nearly $2 billion and cut its workforce from 20,000 to about 3,800. It has also failed to gain traction in the competitive smartphone market dominated by South Korea's Samsung and US-based Apple.

"Lenovo has the expertise and track record to scale Motorola Mobility into a major player within the Android ecosystem," Google chief executive Larry Page said in a statement.

Lenovo chairman and chief executive Yang Yuanqingof said the acquisition "will immediately make Lenovo a strong global competitor in smartphones. We will immediately have the opportunity to become a strong global player in the fast-growing mobile space."

hc/ccp (AFP, AP)