Google’s recently announced acquisition of Motorola Mobility has profound implications across the communications and media value chain. In terms of tangible value, the key asset in the deal for Google is Motorola Mobility’s significant intellectual property.

 

This will help Google and its Android partners defend themselves against patent infringement suits from Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and others. Perhaps more importantly, it will also enable the development of true Google devices, ensuring that these are fully integrated with Google-led operating systems (OSs), applications and potentially other types of Google-developed entertainment content.

 

The game-changing implications of the acquisition are much broader: the combined Google/Motorola entity is set to become one of the major integrated solution providers that enable the delivery of a range of increasingly converged consumer communications and media services to a growing number of devices.

 

Through its acquisition of Motorola Mobility, Google will gain a wide range of assets that will help further its efforts to penetrate both the wireless and fixed device ecosystems (see Table 1).