With China giving their approval of Google’s acquisition of Motorola over the weekend, both companies said it would be a matter of days before they closed. It took two, as they finalized the deal this morning.

Google made sure to mention that Motorola will remain a separate company and that they will license Android, which will remain open. They also noted that Sanjay Jha will step down as CEO of Motorola and that Dennis Woodside, a senior VP at Google, will take his place as the new CEO of Motorola. This move was rumored all the way back in February. Jha will help as he can to ensure a smooth transition. For those concerned about Jha, know that he made $47 million last year and also plans to take home a massive check for stepping down, now that this deal has been completed.

There were no immediate plans for change specifically noted in the press release this morning other than the fact that Woodside has brought on an all-star team of industry leaders to help the company going forward.

Now that the deal is done, are you ready to see this merger “supercharge” Android? 

Google Acquires Motorola Mobility

May 22, 2012

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – May 22, 2012 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that the acquisition of Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: MMI) has closed, with Google acquiring MMI for $40.00 per share in cash. 

The acquisition will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem and will enhance competition in mobile computing. Motorola Mobility will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. Google will run Motorola Mobility as a separate business. 

Sanjay Jha, who revived Motorola’s Mobile Devices business and led the company through this acquisition, has stepped down as CEO, although he will continue to work with Google to help ensure a smooth transition. 

Dennis Woodside, who has overseen integration planning for the acquisition and previously served as President of Google’s Americas region, has become CEO of Motorola Mobility. 

Larry Page, CEO of Google, said, “I’m happy to announce the deal has closed. Motorola is a great American tech company, with a track record of over 80 years of innovation. It’s a great time to be in the mobile business, and I’m confident that the team at Motorola will be creating the next generation of mobile devices that will improve lives for years to come.

“Sanjay Jha, who was responsible for building the company and placing a big bet on Android, has stepped down as CEO. I would like to thank him for his efforts and am tremendously pleased that he will be working to ensure a smooth transition as long-time Googler Dennis Woodside takes over as CEO of Motorola Mobility. 

“I’ve known Dennis for nearly a decade, and he’s been phenomenal at building teams and delivering on some of Google’s biggest bets. Dennis has always been a committed partner to our customers and I know he will be an outstanding leader of Motorola–and he’s already off to great start with some very strong new hires for the Motorola team.”

Dennis Woodside, CEO of Motorola Mobility, said: “Motorola literally invented the entire mobile industry with the first-ever commercial cell phone in 1983. Thirty years later, mobile devices are at the center of the computing revolution. 

“Our aim is simple: to focus Motorola Mobility’s remarkable talent on fewer, bigger bets, and create wonderful devices that are used by people around the world.”

Dennis Woodside has hired a small number of leaders who will immediately join Motorola’s executive team, including Regina Dugan (former Director of DARPA), Mark Randall (former supply chain VP at Amazon and previously at Nokia), Vanessa Wittman (former CFO of Marsh & McLennan), Scott Sullivan (former head of HR at Visa and NVIDIA), and Gary Briggs (former Google VP of Consumer Marketing). In addition to these new leaders, many members of Motorola Mobility’s team will continue in their current roles: Iqbal Arshad (Product Development), Marshall Brown (Chief of Staff), Fei Liu (Mass Market Products), Dan Moloney (Home), Scott Offer (General Counsel), Mark Shockley (Sales), Mahesh Veerina (Software & Enterprise) and Jim Wicks (Consumer Experience Design).

Woodside added: “Motorola Mobility has many outstanding leaders, including people who were behind the original RAZR in 2004 and recent successes like the Droid and RAZR MAXX. Our colleagues joining the team come from varied backgrounds, from DARPA to Amazon and NVIDIA, but they all share a track record of leading innovation at speed, and a great deal of excitement about the mission ahead.”

About Dennis Woodside
Dennis Woodside oversaw Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility, and is former President of Google’s Americas region. He has worked with partners, governments and advertisers in more than 30 countries. Most recently, Dennis was responsible for Google’s Sales & Operations in the Americas. In the U.S. alone, Dennis and his team drove revenue from $10.8 billion to $17.5 billion in under three years. He also was the lead business partner for Google’s advertising product development team, helping launch new ad products globally. Dennis started his career at the company spearheading investment across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He was responsible for the overall go-to-market, product offering and acquisition strategies in these markets, which boasted a 20-fold increase during his tenure. Revenues grew to over $2 billion. 

About Google Inc.
Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Google Closes Motorola Acquisition, Sanjay Jha is Indeed Out as CEO is a post from: Droid Life

According to a regulatory filing, current Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha managed to roll in a total compensation package of around $47 million dollars in 2011, almost 4 times his pay from 2010. Motorola claims that the rise in pay was due to the successful split of Motorola in to two divisions:  Mobility and Solutions. Feel free to sit and think about that for a second….OK, let’s continue.

This comes only 3 months after Motorola reported their Q4 2011 earnings, which showed an $80 million net loss for the quarter. They have scheduled for their Q1 2012 earnings to be released on May 1, but will not have a live call to discuss them – something they decided to cut out once the acquisition by Google inched closer to completion. Speaking of that situation, we are still waiting for China to sign off on it before it can become finalized officially. The U.S. and Europe already have.

And if you were wondering about his status with the company, according to Motorola, Jha is still the CEO. It has been two months since rumors pegged Google’s Dennis Woodside as his successor. Who knows, maybe we’ll see some sort of announcement on this front when those Q1 earnings are released.

Via:  Reuters

Cheers Mike and Aaron!

Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha Made $47 Million in 2011, Four Times his 2010 Pay is a post from: Droid Life

Oh, boy. According a report from Bloomberg, current Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha will be replaced by Dennis Woodside, who is a senior VP at Google and has been leading the transition of the two companies and reporting directly to CEO Larry Page.

Now that the merger has essentially been signed off on, we sort of expected there to be some shuffling up at the top. But dropping Sanjay? Did anyone see that coming? OK, be real, many of you were certainly hoping this would happen after 2 years of questionable moves by Motorola’s smartphone division and what seems to be declining sales quarter after quarter.

Neither Motorola nor Google would confirm the move, but Bloomberg seems to be satisfied with their 3 sources who of course, will remain nameless.

If you are wondering how Sanjay will survive going forward, rumor has it that he will make somewhere around $66 million extra thanks to pushing this merger into the lap of Google. I’d say he should be able to put dinner on the table for a couple of years.

And yeah, I’m dying to hear your thoughts on this one.

Via:  Bloomberg

Bloomberg: Sanjay Jha is Out at Motorola, Google Will Appoint Dennis Woodside as New CEO is a post from: Droid Life

Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha spoke this morning at the Oppenheimer Annual Technology & Communications Conference, delivering on a variety of questions over a 30 minute period.  He touched on the importance (or lack there of?) of the DROID Bionic, where they plan to go globally in the near future through branding, 2nd half tablets, and whether or not he would want to be first to Ice Cream Sandwich.

Sanjay is always a good listen, so we’ve put together a brief summary of some of these parts that stuck out below.   

DROID Bionic:

We’ll start with the hottest of topics, the DROID Bionic.  While Sanjay would not go into any specific details, like say a launch date, he did make an interesting comment about this device being an “important product, but not the only product,” which sort of struck us.  Moto in general seems almost surprised at the success of the Photon 4G, DROIDX2 and DROID3, making the late Q3 release of the Bionic much less important, perhaps.  We know that it’ll be huge for their sales throughout the rest of the year, but you almost get the feeling that they have other things in the works to round out Q4 that could be as important.

A New Global Brand:

Moto could be looking to take a page out of Samsung’s Galaxy branding playbook in the very near future.  When asked today about their fragmentation across carriers around the globe (DROID and non-DROID, Milestone, etc.) and if they would adopt something similar to Samsung’s approach, Sanjay was clear that they are ready to do something immediately.

In fact he said that when you release lead products, “within a very short period across multiple carriers around the globe.  That then means you can put marketing dollars behind it and drive sales globally.”  The follow up question then went directly into branding and whether or not it would become more consistent, garnering this response, ”You got it.  You will see with global launches, much greater consistency.”

Hello, KORE?  While many of us were looking at the KORE name as the next Moto tablet, what if they instead are using it as their new global brand name?  Just something to consider.

New 2nd Half Tablets:

Tablet talk this morning brought to the front, Motorola’s realization that they put too much weight behind their 3G/4G tablet and that they should have been pushing WiFi versions from the beginning.  Clearly they don’t read this site or our comments enough, or they would have know this from day 1.

He did say this though, ”Price points move much faster than we anticipated.  We needed to launch globally with WiFi much earlier.  You will see us launch in 2nd half with our tablets, much more aggressive form factors, much greater differentiation in terms of enterprise capability, in terms of multimedia and in terms of distribution. And potentially some marketing plans behind that.”

So they clearly understand now that people want tablets that aren’t tied to carriers, in different forms factors, and that have much greater multimedia capabilities.  They are also planning a another mass marketing campaign which brings up that new KORE name again that we saw last week throughout a variety of new Moto domain purchases.  There is a chance that it could be the name of their next tablet, but it could also be the new branding of Moto’s mobile line globally.

On Being First to Ice Cream Sandwich:

To finish out Sanjay’s talk at today’s Oppenheimer conference, he was asked point blank, if he would want to be the first to Ice Cream Sandwich after dealing with the frustrations of being first to Honeycomb.  He had this to say:

“It depends. I would say by and large I would like to be the first. But there are times when being the first to launch has greater schedule uncertainty. You are taking more chances with new innovation in the beginning and sometimes that has negative impact. By and large, largely it’s a very positive thing.”

So even after dealing with a half-baked version of Honeycomb and a not-so-impressive selling of the XOOM, Sanjay understands that being the first to a new Android OS is incredibly important  Unfortunately for him, we’re pretty sure that Samsung will be first to ICS.

To Recap:

What I took from listening to this conversation, was that Motorola has big global plans in the very near future through both tablets and phones.  They have realized that marketing their products to a bigger market is much easier if they adopt a new brand name (possibly KORE), and that their focus is no longer just with Verizon and the DROID group.  I did not get the feeling that they will be moving away from DROID, but that everywhere else, they will have some sort of constant name other than Blur that their products can be recognized by.

Any thoughts come to mind from you guys?

Motorola CEO Talks Global Branding, New Tablets and If He Would Like to Be First to Ice Cream Sandwich is a post from: Droid Life

With the release time frame of the DROID Bionic now out of the way, we can start focusing on what Motorola has for us in the future.  CEO Sanjay Jha in today’s Q2 earnings call, would not go into intimate details (not that we were expecting him to), but he did mention his company’s plans to release all sorts of LTE products throughout the rest of the year, bringing their total to “at least” 5 devices.  Aside from the Bionic being the first dual-core 4G LTE device, Motorola will also release another LTE phone and 2 LTE tablets (not counting the original XOOM).

No mention of a carrier, but one would have to assume that at least one of these new devices will head to Verizon as the only carrier with a substantially established LTE network.  AT&T is supposed to be launching their first LTE test market some time this summer, but are not expecting devices other than hotspots to run on it until late 2011.

Could the other phone be the new AT&T device that popped up yesterday?  Possibly.  Do these two tablets include the XOOM2 which has been spotted a couple of times now?  Or maybe one will be a 7″ tablet to try and widen their portfolio?

Should be an interesting finish to 2011 for Motorola, especially with all of the frustrations of the first half of the year.  And let’s not forget, other than new devices, we still have bootloaders to talk about along with some major releases from other companies.

Motorola: We’ll Have Another LTE Phone and 2 New LTE Tablets by the End of the Year is a post from: Droid Life

Here we go again…

Remember all the way back in August of last year when we all debated for months as to whether or not the original DROIDX would have MotoBlur on it?  And then upon finding out that it indeed would, we also learned from CEO Sanjay Jha that the company would start to move away from the name due to a not-so-awesome public reaction to it?  We’re sort of moving back in that direction – or did we ever move away from it?

According to the crew over at Engadget, they were surprised to notice (we weren’t) that the name “Blur” was no where to be found in any of the press materials that accompanied the newly announced Photon 4G yesterday and started asking around.  What they received was a comment from a Moto spokesperson who confirmed that the company is still trying to move away from the name “MotoBlur”, but that doesn’t  necessarily mean we won’t be seeing it on every major handset going forward.

In fact, back in August 2010 when this story first popped up, Moto was clear that they were going to continue to use Blur as a skin – they just weren’t going to call it Blur publicly.  They have basically lived up to those statements; how often have you seen them use the name “Blur” over the last year?  Unless you are an obsessive media personality and are on an earnings call, you probably haven’t.

Unfortunately for them though, we’re still around and will make sure that everyone knows that the blueish overlay that causes constant frustration on their device  is called MotoBlur.

Via:  Engadget

MotoBlur the Name on the Way Out Again, Don’t Expect the Skin Too Though is a post from: Droid Life

It’s never a good thing when the words of a CEO are taken out of context and flipped. But wait, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha did say that 70% of Android Phones that are returned, are due to the fact consumers are installing poor performing 3rd party applications from the Android Market. This seemed to only anger the Android community, causing Moto to receive some not-so-kind feedback. The statement from Jha:

Android is really truly multitask so you can run 64 parallel apps at the same time, and that has an impact on consumer experience and we’re beginning to understand it and understand why 70 percent plus of devices that come back are because they’re downloading third party applications and the impact that that has on the performance of the device.

Now Motorola has had to begin damage control and their PR teams are doing their jobs. In a statement from a Motorola:

He did not state that 70 percent of smartphone returns was due to third-party applications, but that examples of potential contributing factors are battery life, sluggish operation and third-party applications. We’re trying to clear up that was not the point he was trying to make.

To help their case, they are relying on their investment in ‘MOTODEV‘, which they say gives developers the tools to build great applications. So since they are providing some developers with devices to test and run their applications on before releasing to the Market, that should cut back on the amount of “poor performing” 3rd party apps. We shall see if this clears up any question about their CEO’s feelings toward his approval of Android applications. What do you feel? You think the man that brought Motorola back from near extinction should be forgiven? Time will tell.

Via: PC World

Motorola Attempts To Straighten Out CEO’s Statements On Third Party Applications is a post from: Droid Life

We actually reported on this story yesterday, but it seems to have really picked up steam this morning and wanted to make sure you all saw it.  During the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Tech Conference, Moto CEO Sanjay Jha tossed out a remark about 3rd party apps and the harm they are doing to phones.  In fact, he mentioned that some 70% of Android phones that are returned are due in large part to the crappy apps that have been loaded on them which are causing performance issues.  While I had initially assumed he was talking about sideloaded apps, I went back and listened to it again and he definitely blames it all on Android Market apps.

The scary thing here is that he went on to talk about how MotoBlur will eventually help users decide what they should be running on their phones.  According to Jha, Blur knows how long your screen has been on, the usage of your battery, etc.  The example he gave for the future was that Blur knows with “precision” what apps are killing off your battery the quickest and would be able to pop up a notification to warn you of just how poorly that app will perform.  So basically, Motorola would have data showing which apps they believe to be made the poorest and would be able to remind you of that.  We’ll try to ignore our thoughts on how developers will react to that statement.  Yikes.

He also mentioned shortly after “what it is that we determine after interacting with you that you want” in regards to the intelligence of Blur which gives me the shivers.  All I can say is that when a company claims it can help me decide what I want to do with my phone, that I’m tempted to run as fast as I can from them.

Your thoughts?

Sanjay Jha Did Indeed Blame Android Market Apps for Poor Performance, MotoBlur to the Rescue is a post from: Droid Life

You’ve probably heard this by now, but the Motorola XOOM which launched back in February as a 4G LTE device, will not have the service until later on this summer.  We heard word of this set back in April, but Moto CEO Sanjay Jha confirmed the summer timeline again today at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2011 Technology Conference.

“We are late with 4G LTE on Verizon’s network,” Jha said before finishing off with a reminder of the statement he made during their last earnings call, “We will deliver LTE solutions this summer.”

While most of us were disappointed to learn this news, we had brushed it off as sort of a minor delay, hoping that when released, the product would be of the highest quality – and then today Verizon announced the Galaxy Tab 10.1 which will have live 4G LTE out of the box this month, infuriating many of you.

Verizon and Motorola had originally planned for the upgrade to take place at the end of May or June, but after running into issues that they won’t necessarily go public with, we’re stuck waiting until the new Bionic comes out.  He did sort of take blame for the delay though and dropped this little nugget today, “We were delayed on two 4G products because of network interaction issues with our protocol stack.”

The odd thing is, that just 30 seconds later when asked how they can prevent such a delay from happening again, Jha made reference to having burned bridges and “betting everything on one place.”  We can only assume he’s referring to their decision to go with NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 processor (which has been rumored to not cooperate with 4G LTE radios) (NVIDIA cleared the air on this rumor) rather than TI’s new OMAP or Qualcomm’s new dual-core, because as he continued he talked of working with all chipset manufacturers going forward so that they have fallback plans.

It was an odd talk, and one that clearly painted Motorola in a falling behind the curve pack.  They have now been beaten to the 4G LTE wave by HTC, Samsung and LG in phones and are about to be in tablets as well.  They better hope the Bionic knocks all of our socks off or it’s going to be one long year for our friends that brought us the original DROID.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

And a couple of other notes from the conference:

• Jha made a comment about the return rate on Android phones being largely in part due to the installation of 3rd party apps.  He is under the impression that these apps are causing performance issues.  While I have no idea where he is getting this idea, it does scare me that they would possibly consider blocking them from being installed much like AT&T was doing for the last year or so.  (Note: or was he talking about actual market apps?)
• Motorola for the most part, was pleased with the XOOM and were glad to be the first manufacturer to release a Honeycomb dual-core tablet, but made sure to blame the lack of apps for it not blowing up the sales charts.
• Sanjay is excited about Ice Cream Sandwich and the idea that Android will become one giant OS.
• He expects tablet price points to come way down in the second half of the year.
• They have no plans to work with Microsoft and are fully vested in Android.

Motorola XOOM Will Not See 4G LTE Before the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a post from: Droid Life

Just after informing the world that the DROID BIONIC would be receiving the web-top application currently only seen on the Atrix, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha started talking about software upgrades for current devices.  He talked about the learning curve that the industry went through last year, but feels confident in their ability to upgrade devices much more quickly now.  In fact, he pinpointed June 2010 as the time when they really started to get control of the process and feels like they are one of the best at it now.  They were “one of the first to get to Froyo” and “will be one of the first to get to Gingerbread.”

No timeline was given, but we know that Motorola is currently testing Android 2.3 after seeing the leaked pictures of it running on the DROID X a few weeks back.  +1 again for Motorola and their good news today.

Motorola CEO: “We will be one of the first to get to gingerbread.” is a post from: Droid Life

Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha is currently speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference and just dropped some news about the Atrix 4G’s web-top application that should make future DROID BIONIC owners happy.  He made mention of the web-top application not being an exclusive product to the Atrix and will come to all of their “high-end” devices, hopefully in the 2nd half of 2011.  The BIONIC was not announced with web-top accessories at CES due to “timing.”  Jha pointed out that it wasn’t possible to focus on developing web-top for both devices initially and chose the Atrix as the device to launch with it.

He also talked about the performance of the web-top accessories that seem to be getting below-average reviews on the Atrix.  They are aware that the experience is currently below that of a real desktop, but they feel that it can be brought up to speed in the near future.

+1.

Motorola CEO: Web-top App Not Exclusive to Atrix, Headed to High-end phones 2nd Half 2011 is a post from: Droid Life