Motorola is Dragging Google Down With Its Litigation Costs

Motorola is Dragging Google Down With Its Litigation Costs

Google’s stock price is down today, thanks to Motorola Mobility’s warning of poorer than expected financial results. Increased litigation costs, and tough smartphone competition were listed as the causes.

Over at The Mac Observer, John Martellaro writes:

Google is in the process of acquiring Motorola Mobility in order to give it a hardware arm plus a richer patent portfolio in order to compete in the smartphone market. The announcement by Motorola suggests that the road ahead for Google may be more difficult than envisioned. While Apple isn’t winning every patent case in the courts, the company is doing well protecting its intellectual property, and the cost incurred by Motorola seems to be taking its toll. That, in turn, is shaking the confidence of Google investors — for now anyway.

Motorola announced that its fourth quarter sales would be $3.5B, analysts were expecting $3.88B. A small non-GAAP profit is still expected.

Could the acquisition of Motorola by the search mammoth not be the big winner many analysts had said it would be?

Google shares (GOOG) were down to $622.46, down $27.56 at the time of this article.