Google’s plan for Motorola under review by watchdog

The antitrust watchdog said yesterday it has started deliberating on Google’s move to purchase Motorola Mobility in order to determine whether the merger could negatively impact fair market competition and hurt consumer rights.

“We have launched a deliberation process to look into Google’s move to purchase 100 percent of Motorola Mobility as Google submitted business consolidation documents on Tuesday,” the Fair Trade Commission said.

The FTC said it plans to look into the possibility that consolidating the businesses could create inequality in terms of market competition here and eventually harm consumer benefits.

This is the second time for the FTC to review a large overseas merger and acquisition after it studied the proposed joint iron ore venture between BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, the world’s second and third biggest iron ore producers. The joint venture plan later collapsed.

The move comes after Google announced in August that it would buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, raising concern that the large-scale business consolidation could have a significant impact on the global mobile phone market.

Google is the world’s largest supplier of the Android OS, which makes up 43.4 percent of the global smartphone market. Motorola is one of the world’s top 10 mobile phone makers with a market share of about 4 percent.

By Limb Jae-un, Yonhap [jbiz91@joongang.co.kr]