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Google paid $5.5 billion for Motorola’s patents, less than half total cost of acquisition

By on July 25, 2012 at 7:22pm in Mobile News


The Wall Street Journal has uncovered some details about just how much Google paid for each aspect of its Motorola Mobility acquisition last year. Turns out that the patents, which we all thought were the main reason for the purchase, made up less than half the total cost of the $12.4 billion number — $5.5 billion to be exact.

During Google’s quarterly earnings call last week, it was revealed that Motorola added $1.25 billion in revenue to the company, whose overall profits climbed quite a bit year over year.

The rest of the purchase amounted to $2.9 billion for cash acquired, $2.6 billion was “related to goodwill,” and $730 million for customer relationships. A remaining $670 million was for “other net assets acquired,” which is an expensive accumulation of odds and ends.

We’re hoping to see the fruits of that purchase in the coming months; the ATRIX HD LTE and RAZR V have taken steps to be more “Google-ized” by adding on-screen navigation buttons, but that’s about it.

Source: Wall Street Journal
Via: Pando Daily

  • daguy

    If that’s the case, then that’s not a bad deal considering Nortel’s patent portfolio sold for 4.5 billion. If they can put that to good use, great.

    Hard to say what they will do with the Motorola itself, but it should be possible for them to make the company profitable again with the right software direction and some more buying power in the component market.

  • mike

    Now I await the next big release by Goomoto!!!

  • metoo

    Umm firstly, while Moto contributed $1.25 billion of revenue, their losses actually made their contribution to Google a $233 million dollar loss. Why spin it differently? Moto is a money loser and was long before Google bought them

    That is why Google is valuing the patent at only $5.5 billion. Why they have to write down Moto as a loss in the near future, it is better to value as high as possible now so the write down will have a greater tax benefit. They bought Moto to shut it down and keep the patents. I give it a year before Moto is little more than a shell company within google.

  • RealDeal

    Google buy RIM already!

  • Angry Razr Owner

    So they aquired all this money and Google owns part. Yet the Razt still doesnt have ICS update. Maybe they should support their previous phones before releasing new ones with ICS.