Lenovo Buys Motorla from Google

Lenovo has quickly become a smartphone player by tackling emerging markets as well as China, while strategically leaving the U.S. untouched. That strategy is changing: Lenovo is buying Google's Motorola handset business.

Google confirmed after markets closed on Wednesday that Lenovo has acquired Motorola Mobility in a deal valued at $2.91 billion, just two years after the search giant bought it for $12.5 billion.

Lenovo will pay $1.41 billion when the deal closes in cash and shares, and the remainder will be in a $1.5 billion note over three years.

In a company blog post, Motorola confirmed that Google will retain the "vast majority" of the patents it acquired when it first bought the mobile company in 2011, including "current patent applications and invention disclosures." Lenovo will license the patents as part of an ongoing relationship with the search giant.

So, it turns out that Google's Motorola Mobility purchase was really about the patents after all.

Lenovo, which has been on an acquisition spree and recently bought IBM's x86 server business, just reorganized around mobility, enterprise, PC, and cloud services. Lenovo will beef up its mobile unit with the purchase of Google's Motorola Mobility, the unit behind the Moto X.