Motorola sold by Google to Lenovo.

What? Why?

So Google has officially sold Motorola to Lenovo for $2.91 billion. The ‘why’ is simple enough, but the ‘why Lenovo?’ is probably a bit more complex.

But first, a history lesson:
Google bought the phone division of Motorola, Motorola Mobility, for $12.5 billion in 2011. Google’s main reason for the purchase was access to Motorola’s patent portfolio, which it is speculated they hoped to use as a warning to Apple to stop claiming patents on hardware partners using Google’s Android mobile OS.

However, this turned out to not be the case: Motorola’s patents weren’t strong enough to have any real impact, and Google seemed to treat the consumer hardware side of Motorola as a hobby.

After all of Motorola’s hardware which was in the pipeline before the acquisition was released Google decided to be drastic, and in 2013 Motorola released the Moto X. The Moto X wasn’t designed to be the fastest or the most cutting edge Android phone, but rather the best.

The heavy customisation options, nifty software tweaks and the ‘Assembled in USA’ tagline helped to re-secure Motorola’s smartphone chops, and the Moto G showed that a cheap phone doesn’t have to be a ‘cheap’ phone.

However, despite their good phones and good intentions, Motorola wasn’t making a lot of money from the phones — Google laid off 4,000 Motorola employees in 2012 — and it probably stands to reason that even to Google, a $7 billion writedown (Google sold Motorola’s cable box division for $2.35 billion) wasn’t a viable option.

So here we are.

But the question remains: why Lenovo? Its hard to doubt that they are a big player in tech, but they’re hardly a strong name with consumers and not the most obvious choice to take over control of a major phone maker.

The answer, unfortunately lies in another history lesson. I’ll keep it brief; in 2010, HP bought out old-guard phone maker Palm and proceeded to completely mess up any chance they had of coming back to prominence.

Why does this matter?

Because Palm were working on some seriously revolutionary, game-changing stuff, and HP ordered it scrapped, dooming the company.

While Motorola are hardly working on the level Palm were (that we know of), they did do something important; they changed the aim of Android phones.

Instead of chasing faster and faster hardware, phone makers are trying to make phones with better experiences, a charge it could be argued was led mainly by Motorola; the Moto X didn’t have the fastest processor or the biggest screen, but at the time launch it was the best overall Android phone, because it was the best to use.

It wouldn’t be surprising if Google approached a lot more companies than Lenovo, but they were afraid of damaging the newly re-risen giant of the American tech industry, especially considering the scorn the tech press have for HP because of Palm’s fate.

Time will tell if their fears were grounded in paranoia, or reality.