Motorola buys Symbol

MOBILE phone maker Motorola has splashed out $3.9bn to buy the maker of bar code and inventory scanning technology Symbol Technologies.

According to Reuters, the big idea appears to be to boost sales of wireless handheld devices to corporate customers.

Symbol is famous for making the machines that go beep at supermarket check outs and radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags.

Those in the know think that Symbol's scanners, RFID tags and rugged handheld computing devices will work well with Motorola's computing systems for the retail, transportation and health sectors.

More here. µ