Stefan Mileschin

Motorola has just written a cheque for $200 million to buy the British company Psion.

Psion started all this mobile trend with its PDAs, one of which was remarkably like a netbook. Lately it has been making ruggedised handheld products and vehicle-mount terminals.

Motorola Solutions chairman and CEO Greg Brown said that Psion was a "compelling opportunity" to strengthen his mobile-computing portfolio.

Psion chairman John Hawkins said in a statement that the company directors are pleased to unanimously recommend this offer by Motorola Solutions at a good price.

Motorola Solutions will combine Psion within Motorola Solutions' Enterprise Mobile Computing (EMC) business after the acquisition will close in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Psion is based in London and has more than 830 employees, customers in more than 50 countries and delivered 2011 revenues of $27 million.

From 2010, through its open innovation business model, Psion designs and builds modular and customisable variants of its mobile hardware, software and services to address the needs of specific customers. Our guess is that it is probably sitting on a fair few patents too.

http://news.techeye.net/mobile/motorola-buys-psion