Google Boosts Android Wireless Business and Buys Motorola in Largest Acquisition. Microsoft, Apple, Research in Motion, Nokia on High-Alert.

In an effort to boost its Android operating system, and increase market share in the highly competitive mobile phone industry, Google is buying Motorola for $12.5 billion in cash. This is Google's largest acquisition ever, and a clear indication to its competitors in the mobile space that the company is willing to utilize the significant cash at its disposal to dominate the lucrative and growing smartphone market. Apple, Research and Motion, Nokia, and Microsoft will all be on high-alert after this deal.

The deal values Motorola at $40 per share, or a whopping 63 percent premium to its closing price on Friday. Google paying such a huge take-over premium for a company may be a clear indication that current prices for other mobile manufacturers like Nokia and Research in Motion are depressed and poised to rise over the next twelve months, especially if Microsoft decides to fight fire with fire in the mobile handset wars and buy Nokia or RIM.

Google has been gaining significant market-share recently with its Android platform, but a lack of intellectual property in the wireless area was hampering its growth. Instead of innovating on its own, and devoting significant time and resources towards research and development, Google just bought a company with existing patents and previous research completed.

Earlier this month Google's competitors, including Apple, Microsoft, and Research in Motion, bought a significant patent portfolio from Nortel, effectively blocking Google from the process.

Google states that it will run Motorola as a separate business and close the deal by the end of this year, or the beginning of 2012.

More at the Vancouver Sun.

Happy Investing : )

BlackBerry to use Bing as Microsoft Contends with Google's Android now Leading the Smartphone Market.

Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM, TSE: RIM) has announced that Microsoft's Bing search engine, the perennial loser in the struggle for search engine market share, will be the default engine on it's BlackBerry devices. This announcement was made by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer at BlackBerry World, the industry conference hosted by RIM in Orlando, Florida.


Rival Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) dominates the search market and this move by Microsoft is hoping to take away some of Google's dominant market share. Google's Android phones, however, are beginning to take hold of the smartphone market as well, which has been bad for RIM and many other handset makers. Many industry watchers say that the Android phones are more user-friendly and open to third-party apps than are the phones of their rivals.


According to recent Nielson surveys, Android now has a 29% market share of smartphones in the US. Blackberry is now at 27%, while Apple's sits at 27% as well. Of course, it is important to note that Apple and Blackberry are also handset makers, while Google is not, they simply generate the operating system or OS.