Arris announced Wednesday that it has completed the acquisition of Motorola Home with a payment to Google of approximately US$2.2 billion in cash and 10.6 million shares of its common stock. The deal includes Motorola's set-top and modem business in Horsham, its video software solutions, and the company's network infrastructure group based in Massachusetts.

With the addition of Motorola Home, Arris is now a premiere set-top provider globally, and the largest set-top supplier in the U.S. However, Arris also has to contend with areas of overlap between its existing business and the product lines that Motorola adds to the portfolio. Arris and Motorola have traditionally competed over modem and gateway customers, and both companies have pushed their own technology approaches for a Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP). (See CCAP Sales to Top $1B by 2017.)

MSOs, meanwhile, are likely breathing a sigh of relief over the closing of the deal. Cable was always uneasy with the idea of relying on Google as a vendor, and Arris is a familiar industry player.

Now that the deal is done, Arris can also focus more of its competitive energies on Cisco. The two enterprises are well matched and will continue to do battle for market position as the industry evolves in an era of OTT video, gigabit broadband and mobile connectivity.

— Mari Silbey, Special to Light Reading Cable