Libertyville, Ill. – The People’s Republic of China, the only country
that has not yet approved Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility, has extended
the second phase of an investigation by its Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the
Ministry of Commerce, Motorola announced.
Motorola said it and Google
agreed to the extension and that it expects the transaction to close during the
first half of 2012.
“The transaction has been
investigated and cleared without conditions in all other jurisdictions with
pre-closing clearance requirements,” Motorola noted.
Recently, the proposed
acquisition got antitrust clearance from
the U.S. Department of Justice, the European Union, Taiwan and Israel.
When the acquisition was announced in August, Google said
it expected the transaction to close by the end of 2011 or early 2012.
Though the U.S. and EU approved the purchase, they said they would
monitor the companies to ensure that Google licenses essential patents owned by
Motorola for such standards as cellular and Wi-Fi to cellphone competitors on a
fair and reasonable basis.
Under the purchase agreement, Motorola Mobility will become a wholly owned subsidiary
of Google and be run as a separate business. The purchase price is around $12.5 billion.
Google sought money-losing Motorola for the
handset maker’s thousands
of mobile-phone patents, which gives Google leverage to dissuade smartphone-OS
rivals Apple and Microsoft from lodging more patent-infringement actions
against Google’s Android-smartphone licensees, analysts said.
