Motorola Mobility buys security provider 3LM

BARCELONA, Spain--Motorola Mobility announced today that it has acquired Three Laws Mobility (3LM), which provides security software for Android smartphones targeting the business and government market.

Terms of the deal, which was completed late last year, were not disclosed. The news comes on the first day of the Mobile World Congress 2011 conference here.

The acquisition will enable Motorola Mobility to begin selling device management services in the second quarter of this year, according to Motorola Mobility, which split off in January, said. Motorola plans to incorporate the technology into its devices and make it available to other handset makers.

3LM will be a business unit within Motorola Mobility and will continue to work with other Android device manufacturers.

"Along with their technology, the 3LM team brings deep knowledge and expertise in the development of enterprise security features and software for Android," Christy Wyatt, corporate vice president of software and services product management for Motorola Mobility, said in a statement. "With 3LM, we are excited to be able to work across the Android ecosystem to accelerate the adoption of Android devices by corporate users and their IT departments. We are excited to welcome 3LM's talented personnel to the Motorola Mobility team."

Lack of security and device management features has been an impediment to widespread acceptance of most smartphones by IT administrators, except for BlackBerry.