Google Inc announced on Wednesday it is selling the Motorola Mobility Home unit to global communications technology company ARRIS Group Inc in a cash and stock deal valued at US$2.35 billion.
“This transformational combination of two complementary businesses will create a leading end-to-end provider of today’s video, data, and voice products and tomorrow’s next-generation IP-based broadband products,” ARRIS chief executive Bob Stanzione said.
ARRIS expected the acquisition of Motorola Home to enhance its ability to provide innovative products and services for delivering video to homes.
Internet and cable service providers Comcast Corp and Time Warner Inc were the two biggest ARRIS customers prior to the acquisition, which would give the company a diverse, international customer base.
LICENSING
The deal also comes with a “generous patent portfolio” and technology licenses between the companies, according to ARRIS executives.
Key ARRIS product areas include in-home boxes for routing Internet data, cable video, online telephone calls and other services.
“Devices in the home are increasing,” company executives said in a conference call with analysts. “There will always be a device in the home; it will look different, it will evolve, and we will always participate in that transition.”
ARRIS and Motorola Home together will have more than 500 customers in 70 countries.
“These two great companies are really going to be a game-changer in the world of broadband,” Stanzione told analysts at the close of the call.
Google has been shedding unwanted Motorola Mobility assets since it completed its US$12.5 billion takeover of the company in May of this year.
PATENT GRAB
The Internet giant’s purchase of Motorola Mobility was seen as a grab for patents to protect Google’s Android mobile operating system from legal attacks.
Google acquired 17,000 patents with the purchase of Motorola Mobility and has been strengthening its patent portfolio in the fight for dominance in the booming smartphone and tablet market.
Motorola Home boss Marwan Fawaz said his unit and ARRIS share a vision of Internet or cable services and products playing growing roles in people’s lives.
“The combination of our solutions, expert technologists and roadmaps promises to transform how service providers deliver the smart, simple connected home to consumers throughout the world,” Fawaz said.
REALIGNMENT
The sale of Motorola Home came shortly after Google announced other deals to sell manufacturing operations of its Motorola Mobility unit in China and turn over management of a plant in Brazil to Singapore-based Flextronics International Ltd.
The firms said last week that Flextronics would acquire Motorola’s manufacturing operations in Tianjin, China, and assume management and operation of its plant in Jaguariuna, Brazil.
Motorola Mobility is also shutting down most of its operations in South Korea as part of a move to consolidate research.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
RSS