I would wager that it means a ton of these patents arent useful anymore.. the stuff coming out of google X will pretty much make these old patents kinda uselesss.
Even the very nature of the cell phone is rapidly changing and Google Glass is a useless halfstep with contacts coming right around the corner which will be the real hardware killer.
...a lot of Motorola's patents are related to underlying voice and networking technologies. Unless Google X is proposing to come out with a replacement for GSM (...and it's not) that stuff isn't changing.
GSM is over by 2017/2018 for carriers stateside. Where will the patents for these topologies and compression schemes be then? That is proverbially around the corner corporately.
Even the very nature of the cell phone is rapidly changing and Google Glass is a useless halfstep with contacts coming right around the corner which will be the real hardware killer.