Of course, Motorola is now a Lenovo brand, so Osterloh will still have to report to Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing, but it’s interesting to see that while Google apparently acquired Motorola for its patents a few years ago, it really looks like Lenovo bought the company from Google for its smartphone expertise.
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Putting Lenovo Mobile’s future in Motorola’s hands is a huge vote of confidence.
Lenovo’s new organization eliminates duplication, and positions us to compete as a strong player in the smartphone market.
While it’s not entirely out of the ordinary that a phone manufacturer removes its branding from a subsidiary device line – take Huawei’s Honor series for example – the difference here is that Motorola is an entire company in its own right, not a new branding experiment or device line. MBG will continue to drive the overall mobile business, but will now rely on Motorola to design, develop and manufacture smartphone products.
“Both Motorola and Lenovo brands will remain in the market now, and we are excited about our latest product announcements such as the Lenovo VIBE Shot which we are now launching”, Lenovo said in a statement emailed to BGR India.
“The new organizational structure will be immediately released”, said Lenovo Mobile Group President, Chen Xudong, as reported by XiaomiToday. When Lenovo acquired Motorola from Google in January 2014 there was some concern over the fate of both mobile brands. Effective immediately, Rick Osterloh, formerly president, Motorola, will be the leader of the combined global smartphone business unit, which will be under Motorola legal entities.
Update: Sources confirm to BGR India that Rick Osterloh would be leading the mobile business group, which will be merged into Motorola. For now, the two brands – Lenovo and Motorola – will continue to co-exist in the smartphone space, according to Lenovo.
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In light of the earlier official statements made by the company for its quarterly results, Lenovo Mobile will be restructured affecting the product line as well as its brand. It just announced the Cyanogen OS-powered Z1, which will go on sale across Europe and US in September for $300. The merger will certainly help the parent company handle its resources better and save costs on smartphone development.
