Motorola Mobility Shareholders Green-Light Google Buyout

the $12.5 billion buyout offer from Google

According to Motorola Mobility, roughly 99 percent of the shares that voted during the special meeting gave a thumbs up and voted in favor of the adoption of the merger agreement, which presented roughly 74 percent of Motorola Mobility's total outstanding shares of common stock as of October 11.

"We are pleased and gratified by the strong support we have received from our stockholders, with more than 99 percent of the voting shares voting in support of the transaction," Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha said in a statement. "We look forward to working with Google to realize the significant value this combination will bring to our stockholders and all the new opportunities it will provide our dedicated employees, customers, and partners."

Gaining shareholder approval overcomes a significant hurdle in the acquisition process, which both Motorola Mobility and Google now say is expected to close sometime in early 2012.

"It is important to note however, that the merger is subject to various closing conditions, and it is possible that the failure to timely meet such conditions or other factors outside of the Company's control could delay or prevent the Company from completing the merger altogether," Motorola Mobility wrote in a statement.

Google's planned acquisition of Motorola Mobility will give the search giant a major mobility boost, adding a much needed in-house hardware division to its already dominant Google Android mobile platform. Google has noted that despite adding its own hardware, it will keep Android open to other handset manufacturers.

The $12.5 billion buyout also gives Google access to a major cache of Motorola Mobility patents. According to estimates, Google stands to gain more than 17,000 issued patents and more than 7,500 pending patents, Jha has said.

As the acquisition nears completion, Motorola Mobility recently announced plans to cut about 800 jobs, despite seeing an uptick in device sales, which had been slumping for years.

In its third quarter earnings last month, Motorola Mobility experienced an 11 percent revenue jump to $3.26 billion from the third quarter one year ago, but suffered a loss of $32 million. In the third quarter, the company's mobile devices revenue hit $2.4 billion, up 20 percent compared to the year-ago quarter, yet the operating loss was $41 million.

Overall, Motorola Mobility said it shipped 11.6 million devices, including 4.8 million smartphones and approximately 100,000 Motorola XOOM tablets in the third quarter, compared to 9.1 million mobile devices and 3.8 million smartphones shipped in the third quarter last year.