Zebra Technologies closes $3.45bn deal for Motorola Solutions enterprise unit

Zebra will use the purchase to scale its business while Motorola Solutions reworks its corporate focus

Asset intelligence and tracking company Zebra Technologies has completed its acquisition of Motorola Solutions' Enterprise Business for $3.45bn, in a bid to strengthen its delivery of Internet of Things products and services.

The deal was first announced in April of this year and now it is closed it will see the transfer of 4,500 Motorola Solutions employees to Zebra.

The combined companies will have access to 20,000 channel partners across 100 countries, and approximately 4,300 US and international patents and patents pending, the company said.

Zebra has only paid $200m of the deal in cash, at $200m with the majority of the acquisition costs are being taken on as corporate debt, meaning that Zebra will need to make the purchase yield solid financial results. Motorola Solutions' Enterprise Business generated sales of around $2.5bn in 2013.

Ashley Ford, vice president of EMEA at Zebra Technologies, told V3 the company's acquisition of Motorola Solutions' enterprise business unit was a move to scale up Zebra's operations and enable it to push into harnessing the Internet of Things technology trend.

"Zebra Technologies previously was roundabout a $1bn dollar organisation, and now combined it is in the region of $3.5bn. So it really does scale [the business] significantly. It gives us a way into a market that we have been talking about some time, which is asset intelligence and how you manage those assets through thinks like the Internet of Things," he explained.

Ford stated Zebra sees a lot of growth potential in the acquisition, which it believes will offset the risk of taking on over $3bn of debt.

"We do share, without a doubt, a very similar portfolio and book of both customers and indeed partners. So as you can imagine, there's great synergy that we can actually bring when combining those two organisations," he stated.

Customers will now be offered services that include data capture, mobile computing, specialist printing and asset tracking that make use of new technologies and intellectual property.

Motorola Solutions said that by shedding the enterprise unit it will now be able to focus on making its public safety and commercial customers' operations faster and more efficient, as Greg Brown, Motorola Solutions' chief executive, outlined.

"Motorola Solutions is now singularly focused on the very core that our company was founded and built on - a business that continues to help build safer cities and thriving businesses around the world through innovative mission-critical communications solutions," he said.

Motorola Solutions plans to detail the impact of the sale in its quarterly earnings announcement on 4 November.

The acquisition marks the second time that the Motorola brand has been split. Back in 2011 the company split into Mobility and Solutions units, which Google snapped up in 2012 only to sell it several years later to Lenovo at a loss of $9.5bn.