Motorola announced Tuesday morning it is purchasing Symbol Technologies, an enterprise mobility apps and hardware company, for about $400 million. Symbol is the largest maker of both retail scanners and RFID readers. Both companies have touted the deal as an enterprise play, helping Motorola break deeper into emerging opportunities around wireless asset tracking, retail, healthcare, government and other markets where wireless tracking and scanning will be hot. Symbol will be integrated into Moto's Networks and Enterprises division, underscoring this intent.

This is all interesting, but my interest was piqued at possible long-term implications for the consumer market. Symbol's expertise is in wireless scanning and tracking, barcodes and RFID, ruggedized devices, and WLAN. Certainly down the road some of this expertise will make its way into Moto's consumer devices as demand evolves for the use of mobile devices as multi-function devices, capable of initiating payment, scanning products at retail (scanning your own groceries, for example), development of QR code-like applications for broader markets.

I am looking for Moto's participation in business markets to help drive up usage of these raw technologies and applications, and thus drive down the cost of deploying them in consumer applications over the long-term.