Google said on Saturday that Chinese authorities have approved its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings, the last regulatory hurdle to a deal that would allow the world's No. 1 Internet search engine to develop its own line of smart phones…<p>A main condition of the deal is that the Android system remain free and open for five years, said a source who is familiar with the Chinese approval but not authorized to discuss it.

Motorola’s mobile device unit accounted for 71 percent of its total sales, marking a boom in its smartphone and tablet business. The company did not disclose how many tablets it sold during the quarter. Boosted by the Droid Razr and the Droid Razr Maxx, which has a larger battery life, the two smartphones practically carried the company through the first few months of the year, just as it did on the previous quarter.</p><p>

Latest comScore figures show Motorola has just shy of 13% of the mobile OEM market share between December and March, though it dropped by 0.5%.

A judge at the US International Trade Commission has just ruled that Microsoft's Xbox 360 infringes five of Motorola's patents. The ruling isn't unexpected, since many of the patent cover H.264 video encoding, which is a standard — the ITC wasn't persuaded by Microsoft's argument that Motorola will "kill video on the web" by failing its obligation to license the patents under fair and reasonable terms.

In the year or so since the [Motorola] deal was announced, it has become more and more clear that Larry does, in fact, want to make gadgets.

In the latest evidence of this, Google is now planning to open an online tablet store in which it will push Android-based tablets, Amir Efrati of the Wall Street Journal reports.

In this store, Google will initially sell tablets that are manufactured by its tablet hardware partners like Asus and Samsung. But the tablets may be co-branded as Google tablets.

This just in: The TV set-top box is on its deathbed.

Google is looking to unload the set-top box business it will inherit from Motorola Mobility even before it closes on the $12.5 billion acquisition, The Post has learned.

The move appears to be an about-face from last August, when Google CEO Larry Page, in announcing the deal, suggested the business would play a role in his plans for revolutionizing the living room.

Google isn’t the only player looking to get out of the business. As The Post reported exclusively last month, Cisco is also seeking to sell Scientific Atlanta, which along with Motorola has had a near duopoly on the set-top box business.

The U.S. Circuit Judge overseeing the patent dispute between Apple and Motorola Mobility has ordered Motorola to provide Apple with details of Google's $12.5 billion acquisition as well as information about the development of Android.

In a filing on March 2, Apple requested to obtain the information stating that "the Android/Motorola acquisition discovery is highly relevant to Apple’s claims and defenses" in its ongoing patent suit against Motorola, which is also countersuing Apple.

As ever with these presentations it’s the question-and-answer sessions which are most interesting - and it's a great shame that the other CEOs didn't follow Schmidt’s example of giving 30 minutes of his time to the audience. Your humble scribe asked how Google would handle Chinese manufacturers violating Motorola Mobility’s IP now that Google more or less owns it; Motorola was never brave enough to take on China's finest in the Asian nation's courts. Schmidt said he was aware of the issue, said he was not scared of asserting rights in China, but added that the merger was still in progress and no decision had been made.

Google, which won US approval for its acquisition of Motorola Mobility Holdings, is close to naming Dennis Woodside to run the business when the deal closes, three people familiar with the matter said.

Woodside, who led Google’s ad sales in the Americas before leaving that job to oversee the merger, would succeed Motorola Mobility Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Jha, said the people, who declined to be named because the decision isn’t public.

Less than a week after <a href=http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2012/02/apple-brought-formal-eu-antitrust.html>Apple's EU antitrust complaint against Motorola Mobility</a> became publicly known, <a href="http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2012/02/22/google-please-don-t-kill-video-on-the-web.aspx">Microsoft has also filed formal competition charges against MMI with the European Commission</a>.</p><p>With two industry leaders complaining about MMI's alleged abuse of FRAND-pledged, standard-essential patents, the prospects of formal investigations have certainly increased. Under its best practice guidelines, the European Commission will presumably make a determination on the launch of full-blown investigations within a few months. European regulators are <a href=http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2012/01/eu-launches-full-blown-investigation-of.html>already investigating Samsung's related conduct</a>, which is largely consistent with what MMI is doing in Europe.

So the tie-up, now approved by European and American regulators, is about more than simply patents, as Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt has himself acknowledged. Any visitor to both Motorola’s substantial stand at Mobile World Congress and Google’s I/O conference in 2011, however, could probably have guessed that.
At MWC, Moto’s representatives were as keen to show you the security alarms, the set-top boxes and the other emerging technologies as they were the tablets and the mobile phones. Cut to Google’s own show, I/O, and there the company demonstrated its plans for Android@home, with tablets turning on lights and used to stream music. The fit is about much more than patents.

In other words, Google is going to start controlling Android more tightly by stealth: it will sell the best phones, with rapid, regular updates that its erstwhile-partners can’t match. Within a few years, I fully expect Motorola to have overtaken Samsung as the number one Android vendor. And, what’s more, I wouldn’t be surprised if Samsung hadn’t forked Android and ended up producing its own Samsung-only variant, with its own App Store.

Our world is always changing, and the way that children are being taught is also evolving everyday. Motorola Mobility believes in empowering students with innovative technology to help them not only learn better, but have more fun doing it. So earlier this year, we gave students at one San Diego high school Motorola XOOM tablets to see what would happen.