Motorola did not acquire the company per se, its manufacturing facilities, handset inventories, sales offices or any other capital or real assets, and Sendo has gone into administration due to financial pressures. Of course, Motorola did not take on any of Sendo’s liabilities or financial obligations either.
Founded in 2000, Birmingham-based Sendo’s technological prowess was matched, in almost equal proportions, by the stormy nature of its relations with much bigger players in the market, notably Microsoft, with which it engaged in a prolonged lawsuit, settled in September last year, and Ericsson, which it reported to the European Commission earlier this year, only to be sued by the Swedish giant in return.
In 2002 Sendo sued Microsoft in the US, accusing it of stealing its technology and customers over the ill-fated Windows-based Z100 handset, which the UK manufacturer pulled only days before it was due to launch. A settlement, the financial details of which were not disclosed, was eventually reached in September 2004, but whatever money changed hands was clearly not enough for loss-making Sendo.
Then there was the spat earlier this year with Ericsson, which Sendo accused of seeking to license on to third parties technology that was rightfully Sendo’s. In response to which Ericsson sued Sendo for alleged patent infringement around GSM and GPRS. There was also a lawsuit from Sendo against Orange in 2003 involving a handset made by HTC and running the Microsoft OS.
All this litigation clearly contributed to Sendo’s financial woes, as did the need to switch in mid-stream from Windows to Symbian, and this year the wheels finally came off, making a fire sale inevitable.
What the acquisition brings to Libertyville, Illinois-based Motorola is a number of things. Firstly, there are the 50 existing and 40 pending patents the US vendor mentioned in announcing the acquisition. Then there are the development teams in the UK and Singapore, both of which are now being integrated into Motorola’s R&D staff.
Perhaps most importantly, however, is Sendo’s ability to respond to some of the big carriers that Motorola has or wants as customers for its handsets. Andrew Till, director of strategy for mobile devices at Motorola in Europe, said the acquisition enhances our capabilities for bringing more products to market and for customization [of products] for European operators.
There has been speculation that by buying Sendo’s best bits, Motorola is distancing itself from the Windows Mobile platform, having already put Symbian at arm’s length by selling its 19% stake to Nokia and Psion back in 2003.
Mr Till said the acquisition represented no issues with regard to our relationship with Microsoft, and said that the work with the Symbian OS focused on getting 3G to market for Hutchison and now DoCoMo, with the M1000. That said, he added that our core focus is on open standards, namely our Linux kernel with a Java virtual machine running on top.
So will the Sendo engineers acquired by Motorola be working on Linux/Java? The great thing about them is that they bring a skill set that can be transferred, Mr Till argued. They did some great innovative work on Microsoft platforms and have strong expertise in Symbian, and we can direct them in any direction.
