And they're off to a good start with the Moto X and Moto G. I don't really understand why they'd want to sell Motorola now.

Because they aren't actually off to a good start.

Sale for the MotoX at least have been... unimpressive.

You don't achieve impressive sales numbers for a smartphone in one generation, because of the enormous importance of brand recognition. Samsung makes subpar handsets at best, but achieve enormous sales because of their brand recognition. That took them several generations to build up. It wasn't until the S3 that people really started to recognize Samsung phones as a distinct entity.

Google should've given Motorola at least 2 or 3 more years before calling it quits, if they really wanted to gain a foothold in the hardware market.

Yea--the only reason I even know about Moto X is because I was looking for a cheap data plan, and stumbled upon the phone at rebublic wireless. My point is I agree--it takes time.

True. Feels like the 80s with the Japanese all over again, and American companies giving up and selling out before they've even gone a single round.

I'm curious as to what exactly Lenovo is getting out of the deal. I hear good things about the new Motorola phones, but is the midlevel handset business really that attractive a one? I doubt HTC or Sony are feeling particularly good about their exposure to it.

The same thing Lenovo got from buying IBM's PC and now server businesses. Instant inroads into a foreign market. I mean, Lenovo went from a brand no one had ever heard of to the worlds largest PC maker in a decade or so. They're pretty awesome at squeezing money out of low margin businesses and creating some pretty high quality products (their own branded smartphones are pretty awesome looking, wish they sold in Canada).

They might look awesome in the pictures. I was testing their handsets while visiting Thailand and the only good thing about them was that they were cheap. The builds were pretty bulky and the OS felt quite slow when comparing to the Nexus 5 right next to them. Of course you paid 3000-6000 THB from then when Nexus was 16900 THB...

Which series did you try out? I was thinking K series...

I wasn't so interested about them to really write down the numbers. Lots of different letter + four numbers combinations and I remember that none of them was above 10 000 THB.

I am guessing market share for mobiles in the US is their first target. It would certainly give them an enormous kick start into the market. It looks like a similar strategy when bought the laptop business from IBM.