Mergers and acquisitions - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• With Motorola sale to Lenovo, Google is unloading a headache

  By selling Motorola Mobility to Lenovo, Google is ending a combination that never really worked out while keeping assets that could prove valuable down the road.

• Mindspeed acquisition fuels Intel's hopes for bigger network role

  Intel's acquisition of mobile network assets from silicon vendor Mindspeed Technologies will give the chip giant what it needs to extend the Intel architecture throughout mobile operator networks, helping the carriers upgrade hardware and roll out new services more quickly, according to Intel.

• Top tech stories of 2013: Big Brother, wearables, and the struggles of aging tech giants

  Politics collided with the world of technology this year as stories about U.S. government spying stirred angst both among the country's citizens and foreign governments, and the flawed HeathCare.gov site got American health-care reform off to a rocky start. Meanwhile, the post-PC era put aging tech giants under pressure to reinvent themselves. Here in no particular order are IDG News Service's picks for the top 10 tech stories of the year.

• Talk to me, Facebook! Social net buys speech recognition company

  Facebook said it is buying Mobile Technologies, a company known for its speech recognition and voice-to-voice translation technology.

• Five ways the Sprint-Clearwire drama might end

  The battle of takeovers among Sprint Nextel, Dish Network, Clearwire and SoftBank has heated up as Clearwire's board recommended shareholders accept Dish's bid instead of Sprint's.

• Salesforce.com aims for next $1 billion business with ExactTarget buy

  Salesforce.com's pending US$2.5 billion purchase of marketing software vendor ExactTarget will help it develop a new $1 billion annual revenue stream and set the company on a clear strategic course for the foreseeable future, according to Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff.

• BMC going private could be the right move at the right time

  BMC has agreed to be acquired by a private investment consortium headed by Bain Capital and Golden Capital, in a deal worth about $US6.9 billion.

• Cisco acquisition highlights growing interest in small cells

  Operators and telecom equipment vendors are showing a growing interest in small cells, which aim to give users improved coverage and speeds.

• Microsoft may be seeking protection from Linux with Dell loan

  Microsoft's $US2 billion loan to Dell is a sign that the software maker wants to influence hardware designs in a post-PC world while protecting itself from the growing influence of Linux-based operating systems in mobile devices and servers, according to analysts.

• SAP in 2013: Five things to watch

  It was a typically busy year for SAP, with the company making headlines for strong sales of its HANA in-memory database, high-profile acquisitions and aggressive moves into cloud computing.

• Why Oracle bought Eloqua, and what it means for the market

  Oracle surprised many tech industry observers by announcing Thursday it would pay US$871 million for marketing automation software vendor Eloqua. The move seemed a bit unlikely given the amount of sales and marketing software Oracle already had.

• Six questions raised by Oracle's Q2 earnings announcement

  Oracle's second-quarter earnings announcement beat expectations in some respects, but also raised a number of interesting and in some cases, unanswered questions. Here's a look.

• 2012: The year in quotes

  Some of the most memorable IT-related quotes were uttered in courtrooms this year, which involved a steady stream of legal challenges about intellectual property. In no particular order, these are some of the comments that stuck with us as 2012 winds to a close.