Google selling Motorola smartphone business to Lenovo for $2 billion

Google is selling Motorola smartphone business to Lenovo for $2 billion, a price that makes Google's biggest acquisition look like its most expensive mistake. In 2012 Google buy Motorola for $12.4 billion and got more than 17,000 mobile patents, providing Google with legal protection for its widely used Android software for smartphones and tablet computers. The sale comes as Google has turned its energies towards hardware as well as software products. The company is working on Google Glass, its wearable computer, a smart watch and driverless cars as well as tablets and laptops.

This is the second sale Google has made of assets it acquired after buying Motorola Mobility. In 2012 Google sold Motorola Home, which made set-top boxes and cable modems, to Arris for $2.35bn. Lenovo is already the world's largest PC manufacturer, has been expanding into other areas. This is Lenovo's second large buy of the month. Last week the Chinese company paid $2.3bn for IBM's server business. It bought IBM’s laptop business in 2005.