Global tech news roundup: Lenovo buys Motorola, Hackers attempt hit on Yahoo, WeChat in aggressive global drive

Tendai Mupaso Avatar

The Tech scene has been on the brim over this past week both locally and regionally. Locally, Telecel’s long awaited mobile money service Telecash was finally launched but the launch may have been overshadowed by the short lived EcoCash Droid app created by the Gedion Moyo’s  – at least here on Techzim.

moto-lenoInternationally, Lenovo’s purchase Motorola from Google was the biggest headline because it signals an end to Googles short lived experiment (22 months) as a smartphone maker and also signals Lenovo’s ambition in the smartphone space. According to the breaking article in the Wall Street Journal, Google was struggling to command a strong position in the smartphone business with just 1% of the market share. Selling Motorola at a loss may also indicate that Google was keen to dispose this part of their business myriad. Google had bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in May 2012 and they have sold it for $2.9 billion to Lenovo. Although Google still retains the majority of Motorola’s patents, there is no doubt that Lenovo is the winner in this deal.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Lenovo’s purchase will purchase of Motorola will move it from fifth to third after Apple and Samsung in the smartphone market. Lenovo is already the leading PC maker thanks to it’s purchase of IBM’s PC business in 2005.

Meanwhile, Google’s main search competitor, Yahoo announced that there was an attempt to mass hack Yahoo Mail. This is still a developing story and the incident is serious enough that Yahoo had to reset user passwords on affected accounts.

Closer to home, an uneasy storm is brewing in South Africa as the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) introduces new termination fee regulations that favor small players like Cell C and Telkom. Techcentral reports that due to the new asymmetry measures, Vodacom and MTN will pay R44c/minute to carry calls from their networks to Cell C and other smaller operators. The smaller operators will pay 20c/minute to terminate calls on MTN and Vodacom.

MTN and Vodacom share prices fell when these new regulations were announced. Icasa says the move will help smaller players develop infrastructure and reduce retail prices.

WeCha-Logo-11-22_web

Still in South Africa, Instant Messaging app (now platform?) WeChat has been in a promotional drive to sign up users in South Africa. The Chinese instant messaging app partly owned by South African Nespers has been running a promotion were people who sign up to the app and follow radio stations like Metro FM and 5FM on WeChat can stand to chance to will cash prices between R1,000 to R25,000 (R200,000 total in one week). The Radio stations will then randomly call live on air any of the new WeChat account holders following them and announce that they have won the cash price. The total amount won is set by raffle.

WeChat is currently doing another promotion in the US were users are being asked to refer their Google contacts to WeChat and those with 5 successful referrals will be rewarded with a $25 gift card from Restaurant.com.

Clearly WeChat is in an aggressive drive to expand in every region and it will be interesting to see if rivals like Whatsapp will respond.

What stories stood out for your in the international tech scene? Share below.

Image credit: Trendblog.net

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4 comments

  1. Greg Kawere

    What many people don’t know is that one of the conditions for Google buying Motorola was that it would sell Motorola Mobility’s cable box division to Arris for $2.3 billion this eventually happened in April 2013.

    Google is not selling the whole of Motorola Mobility to Lenovo, Google will be
    keeping Motorola Mobility patents worth an estimated $5.5 billion &
    the Motorola Mobility’s advanced technology group which houses a lot of
    long term technology projects like the Project Ara modular smartphone.

    Without considering the value of Motorola Mobility Advanced technology group
    Google made a loss of $1.8 billion, but there is a lot of things that
    Google gained from buying Motorola Mobility.

    For instance the Motorola patents where greatly undervalued as the Motorola patents are a safety net to the Android operating system.vGoogle can now also
    use the Motorola Mobility patents it owns to protect phone manufacturers
    who use the Android operating system from litigation.

    The
    fact that Google was owning a phone manufacturer was something that
    created a atmosphere of distrust between other phone manufacturers on
    the continued use of the Android operating system. So in many ways the
    sale of the phone division of Motorola was a necessary evil.

    Additionally
    Google gained engineering talent, mobile market insight and potential
    future sources of revenue from projects housed in the Motorola
    Mobility’s advanced technology group

    So in the mix of
    things, Google actually gained more from buying Motorola Mobility,
    breaking it up & then selling some components they didnt want &
    keeping those components of Motorola they wanted

  2. Tapiwa ✔

    Google had bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in May 2012 and they have sold it for $2.9 billion to Lenovo

    *sigh*. Yet another person repeating this inaccurate sound-bite. I’ll respond in kind by repeating a reposte

    >> Nicolas Charbonnier, commenting on announcement page
    Moto total cost $12.5B to Goog in 2011:
    – $3.2B Moto’s 2011 cash
    – $2.4B Moto’s 2011 deferred tax assets
    – $2.35B Moto’s Set-top-box business sold in 2012
    – $75M Moto’s factories business sold in 2013 (incl 7K factory employees)
    – $2.91B Moto’s Mobility business sold in 2014

    Thus Moto’s remaining assets including patents, buildings
    (in Chicago and elsewhere), probably a good part of the
    12K employees cost Goog $1.56B

    So, for $1.56bn they get patents and assets. As a bonus, they have created a viable contender to Samsung in the Android space, which will help to reign-in Samsung’s wilder ambitions. I’m guessing the contract has non-forking clauses, which will help fight the multitude of Chinese OEMs who don’t bundle Google Services. Google’s version of Android might just own China.

    I think Google is the winner in this deal

  3. beatnyama

    “Lenovo is already the leading PC maker thanks to it’s purchase of IBM in 2005”

    Lenovo did not purchase IBM, but rather IBM’s PC business.

    1. Tendai Mupaso

      True that.

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