Google announced yesterday that it will acquire Motorola Mobility for £7.65bn ($12.5bn). The deal is expected to be completed in late 2011 or early 2012. Buying hardware is rather unusual move for Google, but as the company explains: “The acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a dedicated Android partner, will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem and will enhance competition in mobile computing.”

The takeover is said to boost the rise of Google’s Android software in the smartphone market. The £7.65bn deal is Google’s biggest acquisition to date. Motorola is one of 39 manufacturers of handsets that use Google’s Android operating system. Other manufacturers, including HTC and Samsung, will be free to release phones using Google’s Android software. Motorola Mobility will be run as a separate business. Larry Page, Google chief executive officer, commented: “Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers.”

The deal represents growing competition on the smartphone market and is said to be the biggest challenge yet to Apple, which has led the way in the smartphone market with the iPhone. It also comes just 6 months after Nokia signed a strategic deal with Microsoft in effort to increase their share in the market.

Motorola was the first mobile maker to partner with Google and release phones based on its Android operating system. Analysts predict that by the end of 2012 half of the world’s smartphones will be using Android software as manufacturers prefer adopting Android operating system rather that developing their own.

Apple launched the beta for iCloud, cloud computing service that allows users to store data such as music files for download to multiply devices, such as personal computers running Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows on servers owned by Apple, iPhones, iPads or iPods. iCloud is to replace Apple’s MobileMe program, acting like data syncing centre for email, contacts, calendars and other data.

Beta is now available to all users with an Apple id and features web-based version of Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Find my iPhone or iWork. Users can access them if they visit iCloud.com while using Mac OS X Lion or iOS 5. However, it doesn’t include Apple’s cloud music services. Apple unveiled pricing structure for iCloud storage:

• first 5GB of storage on the service- free
• an addition 10GB- $20
• 20GB- $40
• 50GB- $100

Mashable is reporting that iCloud beta is a modified version of MobileMe and it includes similar interfaces. It also includes the addition of iWork support. Overall, iCloud has is the simplistic and universal interface for all of Apple’s cloud services.

iCloud is said to be unveiled this autumn. According to an Apple support page, MobileMe will be discontinued after June 30, 2012, and anyone who had an account as of the unveiling of iCloud has been extended to that date.