Further signaling its commitment to the smartphone market, Google today announced that it has agreed to buy mobile manufacturer Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion – the search giant’s largest deal to date.
Google said the acquisition of Motorola, which selected Android as its sole mobile operating system in 2008, will enable it to “supercharge the Android ecosystem,” increasing competition in the smartphone market across the board.
The deal could be lucrative for both companies. Google, though a dominant force in the smartphone OS market, lacks much of the intellectual property that has enabled other smartphone makers to become profitable. Motorola, meanwhile, has struggled to compete against other smartphone manufacturers recently and posted a net loss of $56 million during the second quarter.
Google said it will continue to offer Android as an open platform, allowing other hardware manufacturers, such as Samsung and HTC, to create handsets for the mobile OS.
Motorola Mobility will continue to run as a separate business, Google said, and the deal is expected to be closed by the end of the year or in early 2012.
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