Motorola's handset division heading to Huawei?

Motorola's handset division heading to Huawei?
Could get Moto kit

Google is looking to rid itself of Motorola's handset arm and sell the whole thing to Huawei.

This is according to the latest phone rumours in Asia, with The Wall Street Journal reckoning Google is eyeing up the Chinese manufacturer for a possible sale of Motorola's handset division.

Google has always said it isn't looking to give Motorola the upper hand when it comes to its Android OS. The whole Motorola Mobility deal was specifically about patents – 17,000 of them in fact – and this latest rumour suggests that Google may well be close to proving this with a sale of Moto's hardware.

Goodbye Moto

Google is currently denying that any talks have taken place with Huawei but the smartphone and tablet company is well placed to take on Motorola's handset business.

This year's CES shows that the company is looking to innovate in a cut-throat market. It was the first to announce a quadcore smartphone with the Huawei Ascend D Quad, so the intent is there to match the likes of Samsung and HTC when it comes to Android handsets.

This is all very much rumour and conjecture, however, but there's not much likelihood in Google holding on to Motorola's handsets – given the search giants real passion is for software and not hardware.

TechRadar has spoken to Huawei who denies any knowledge of such a deal, so let's not get carried away with this one.

rumour meter

Via Wall Street Journal and IntoMobile

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.