Google to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion

Google announced today it has agreed to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, a 63% premium over Friday's closing price. See Larry
Page's post on Google's blog.

The deal has direct implications for the Philly area:

-Google is buying Motorola Mobility (many say) primarily for its trove of wireless patents. This sounds like a bypass of King of Prussia-based InterDigital, which had been reported to be in serious discussions with Google. That doesn't rule out someone such as Samsung acquiring them; it just takes one huge bidder off the table.

-What does this mean for Motorola Mobility's Horsham-based Home business, which provides equipment to the cable industry? While Google has made some so far unsuccessful forays into parts of this market (Google TV), it is not clear what their strategy would be for this unit, though Larry Page said in his statement that Google is "excited" to work with it as it transitions to IP.

Motorola split into two separately traded companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions, at the beginning of this year.

Motorola’s home division reported a profit of $62 million on revenue of $907 million in the 2nd quarter of 2011.

Update: InterDigital is down 290% so far today.

TechCrunch live blogged Google's conference call discussing the deal.



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