Google revenues increase to $14.4 billion for Q4 2012, but Motorola not in the black
Google has just posted its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2012, and if you had any doubt that Google would come out alright then you can lay them to rest. The company posted revenues of $14.4 billion for the quarter, a 36% year-on-year increase since 2011. That was enough to turn a profit of $2.9 billion on the quarter, and it put Google up over $50 billion in revenue for the year, a number that the company has never been able to boast before today.
Motorola, owned by Google but operating as a separate entity, added an additional $1.51 billion to Google’s coffers, but that was all it added. Financial woes continued for the OEM as it lost $353 million for the quarter, and we can’t imagine the numbers for the entirety of the year are opposite that trend. Google mainly purchased Motorola Mobility for its extensive library of mobile patents, a library which the software giant felt was worth $12.5 billion.
Google was originally rumored to sell Motorola’s hardware business off and retain nothing but the patents, but since the acquisition has closed the company has only showed the desire to sell the set-top box side of things. Google’s influence over Motorola will be a lot more meaningful in 2013 if recent rumors are to be believed.
The two companies are said to be working together on the “X Phone,” a powerful device that might be sold via all carriers in the Google Play Store with stock Android and the ability to uninstall bloatware. In the earnings call, Google’s Patrick Pichette confirmed what we already knew in regards to its ability to get more hands-on with Motorola’s product cycle: typical development cycles last 12-18 months.
This meant that before Google could get to have some fun of its own, Motorola had to get through other devices being prepared for the likes of Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and various others in the international markets. Add in the time it would take for a new phone to go all the way from an early technological fetus in research and development to something of prototypical or even marketable form, and you can see why we aren’t seeing the other, more tangible fruits of Google’s expensive purchase until now.
We’ll see if their plans for 2013 will be enough to right the ship before too long, but we’ll have to wait for Google I/O to see if any of the aforementioned rumors are even real.
[via Google]