If you're like us, you certainly have more than just a few questions about what Lenovo's $2.91 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, which was just announced earlier this afternoon, means for the future of Motorola. Lenovo chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing recently addressed what Lenovo's plans for Motorola Mobility are during a conference call on Wednesday evening.
"We acquired a legendary brand in the technology world – Motorola," he said, referring to the company's products as "treasures." "We will protect the Motorola brand and make it even stronger. When we acquired IBM's PC business in 2005 we had a similar opportunity with ThinkPad and we succeeded." Yuanqing said that Lenovo is also acquiring 2,000 patents from Google and that Lenovo will "build on [that] innovation" with Motorola Mobility, which will help the Chinese company "have a much broader portfolio" across all price points. Lenovo will also use Motorola's strengths in the United States, particularly with consumers and carriers, to push future growth.
"Motorola is moving in the right direction, they are the most agile OEM in the U.S. and Latin America, they are relaunching in India, and together we will bring the momentum to return this company to profit and growth and challenge leaders in the smartphone arena over the next few years," Yuanqing said.
When asked by TechnoBuffalo what the company's future plans for the Moto X and Moto G are, Yuanqing said that Lenovo hopes to make the Moto X even more successful by "combining it with efficient operations from Lenovo to sell more volume of the Moto G," and presumably the Moto X.
TechnoBuffalo also asked Lenovo's plans for the existing management team, the ones who are largely responsible for the success of the Moto G and Moto X to date, including CEO Dennis Woodside. Yuanqing was vague on the company's plans, though said the management team will transition to Lenovo and will help "grow the business further." Yuanqing repeatedly praised Motorola's software and hardware engineering teams, so presumably there aren't plans for many layoffs, though more will become clear as the deal moves toward closure.
