Lenovo completes $2.91bn acquisition of Motorola

Lenovo has completed its $2.91 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility from Google.

The deal includes the payment of $1.41 billion in cash and Lenovo stock at closing, with $1.5 billion still to be paid in a three-year promissory note, Lenovo said in a statement today.

Lenovo paid Google $228.5 million to adjust for greater-than-expected cash on hand at closing. The transaction left most of Motorola’s patent portfolio with Google while Lenovo received a license to the intellectual property.

Lenovo chief executive officer Yang Yuanqing says Motorola provides a shortcut for entering mature markets and will make the Chinese company “a global player.”

Lenovo boosted global smartphone shipments by 38 per cent in the third quarter to 16.9 million units, ranking it fourth worldwide, International Data Corporation (IDC). said yesterday. Its market share expanded to 5.2 per cent, from 4.7 per cent a year earlier.

Lenovo has made inroads beyond China, with international markets accounting for 20 per cent of smartphone shipments in the third quarter, compared with 9 per cent a year before, IDC said.

Motorola’s sales in Asia, Latin America and the US would have boosted Lenovo’s global ranking, Kiranjeet Kaur, a Singapore-based analyst with IDC, said today. “If the deal had closed by now, they would have been in the No. 3 spot,” Kaur said of Lenovo.

Lenovo was surpassed in the quarter by Xiaomi, which surged into third place after more than tripling shipments to 17.3 million units, taking 5.3 per cent of the world market, IDC said.

Both Lenovo and Xiaomi have headquarters in Beijing. Xiaomi was founded in 2010 as a company to make software for mobile devices running Google’s Android system, and it introduced its first smartphone in 2011.

Bloomberg