Google sells Motorola Home set-top biz to Arris for $2.3B

The Web giant inherited the cable-box maker with its acquisition of Motorola Mobility earlier this year.

by Steven Musil

Google has sold the Motorola Home set-top business -- which it inherited as part of its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility earlier this year -- to the Arris Group, for $2.35 billion in cash and stock.
Under the terms of the deal, Google will receive $2.05 billion in cash and $300 million in newly issued stock, giving it a 15.7 percent ownership stake in Arris upon the deal's closure. Arris will also gain access to a collection of Motorola Mobility patents.
The broadband technology provider is expected to use the acquisition to enhance the networking equipment it offers to cable providers.
"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," Dennis Woodside, CEO of Motorola Mobility, said in a statement.

The Web giant has apparently been shopping the business for several months and had reportedly hired Barclays to fetch a price of $2 billion for the unit, which makes set-top boxes used by cable providers to deliver video -- a business that offers solid cash but little growth.
While Motorola's Android smartphones fit into Google's strategy, the set-top box business wasn't an area in which the company was eager to invest too many resources, especially since it didn't appear to offer much to the Web giant's Google TV initiative.