Google to own nearly 6 percent stake in Lenovo

Internet search giant Google Inc will own a 5.94 percent stake in Chinese computer maker Lenovo Group worth $750 million once Lenovo completes a deal to buy Motorola Mobility from Google.

Google will take 618.3 million Lenovo shares at $1.21 per share, according to a disclosure on the Hong Kong stock exchange late Thursday.

The announcement was part of a deal which Google and Lenovo announced on January 30. Lenovo agreed to buy Google's Motorola handset division for $2.91 billion in a cash and stock deal.

Shares of Lenovo rose 1.32 percent on Friday trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

"With a 5.94 percent stake in Lenovo, Google will become the second-largest shareholder of Lenovo, signaling a strengthened partnership between the Internet giant and the world's largest personal computer maker," Li Yi, secretary-general of the China Mobile Internet Industry Alliance, told the Global Times on Friday.

"The two companies might have further cooperation in high-tech fields such as smart TVs and wearable computing devices," he said.

The deal is still waiting for approval from the US and Chinese authorities. Analysts believe Google's sale of its Motorola unit is a smart move, while it is challenging for Lenovo to acquire a loss-making business.

"The sale will now allow Google to step back from the handset sector and focus more on its Android software, thus easing tensions with major smartphone makers including Samsung and Huawei," Zeng Tao, a Shanghai-based independent telecom analyst, told the Global Times on Friday.

As a shareholder of Lenovo, Google will also have easier access to the Chinese mainland market after its withdrawal from the mainland search market in 2010, Zeng said.

Google acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in 2012. Although Lenovo paid much less this time, many investors still believed Lenovo overpaid for the Motorola unit, which caused an 8.2 percent slump in Lenovo's stock prices on the day the deal was announced.

According to the deal, Lenovo will own Motorola's brand, personnel and more than 2,000 patents, while Google will retain the rest of Motorola's more than 20,000 mobile patents.

"The patents are worth more," Zeng said, "but Lenovo only got a small proportion of Motorola's patents from Google."

It's not the first time Lenovo has expanded abroad through mergers and acquisitions. Lenovo bought IBM's ailing PC division for $1.25 billion in 2005, and took seven years to grow into the world's largest PC maker.

"But whether Lenovo can copy its previous success is still unknown, because the global smartphone market today has already passed the high-growth phase," Zeng said, "and the competition in this sector is more intense than that in the PC sector a decade ago."

Not everyone is downbeat. The deal will make Lenovo the world's third-largest smartphone maker in terms of sales volume, IT consultancy EnfoDesk said in a research note published last week.

Through the Motorola deal, Lenovo can explore overseas and high-end markets and also obtain patents to increase competitiveness against Samsung and Apple, the EnfoDesk note suggested.