Explores option to spin off low margin PC business…. like say back to Compaq (which was a $25 billion purchase under ex-CEO Carly Fiorina).Also dumping mobile hardware devices including webOS based hardware (which came with the $1.2 billion purchase of Palm under ex-CEO Mark Hurd) to focus primarily on enterprise services and printers. The company is of course taking a $1 billion restructuring charge to wind down that operation.
Notice a trend here? Companies often times snap up big names for a song to acquire technology, buy into a market, and/or boost market share numbers. Often times, said company ends up spinning it off later in life (if it hadn’t found some way to kill it along the way or gut and devalue it). Look at what happened with Time Warner/AOL (acquisition and then spin off) or Microsoft/Danger (acquisition, gutted/rebranded/mutiny project killed) for example.
Thus it should not be surprising why I am absolutely cynical about Google’s plan to acquire Motorola Mobility and why I want to dump the remainder of my shares (but at an amount where I can at least say that I met my goal of doubling the principle).
