A dark horse emerges in the race to acquire Motorola Home Business-- US-based networking equipment maker Arris beats Pace and buys the Google cable TV technology division for $2.35 billion in cash and stock.
"This transformational combination of two complementary businesses will create a leading end-to-end provider of today's video, data, and voice products and tomorrow's next-generation IP-based broadband products," Arris CEO Bob Stanzione says. "Ever-expanding consumer demand for bandwidth will continue to drive growth across cloud and network technologies we provide that enable innovative home entertainment products and services."
Motorola Mobility CEO Denis Woodside comments "the industry faces its biggest technology transformation, and together ARRIS and Motorola will be able to accelerate related innovations such as the introduction of the IP Connected Home environments that service providers need and that their consumers crave."
Through the acquisition Arris gets a heft patent portfolio, together with licenses to a range of Motorola Mobility patents-- and a potential patent lawsuit (filed October 2012) from DVR maker TiVo against both Motorola Home and Google.
Formerly known as General Instrument, Motorola Home was bought by Motorola for $17bn in stock back in 2000. It was later combined with the Motorola Mobility business, which spun off as a standalone company acquired by Google for $12.5bn on May 2012.