Schaumburg, Ill. –
will sell off most of its
cellular-infrastructure business to Nokia Siemens for $1.2 billion by the end
of the year as Motorola continues to plan for an eventual split into two
companies.
Nokia Siemens will
pay cash for the business, providing Motorola with additional resources to
invest in the company and make possible handset-related acquisitions, analysts
said. Motorola will retain its iDEN-network infrastructure business and
“substantially all the patents” of its cellular-infrastructure business.
Motorola operates
two business groups that will eventually split apart. One, the mobile device
and home business, markets such products as mobile handsets, PNDs, such digital
home entertainment devices as cable set-top boxes, and infrastructure that
enables service providers to deliver video, voice and broadband-data solutions
to consumers. The business is said to position Motorola “to lead in the convergence
of mobility, media and the Internet.”
Motorola’s second
business, enterprise mobility solutions and networks, includes the network
infrastructure business to be sold to Nokia Siemens as well as two-way radio
products and mobile computers for government and business, barcode scanners,
RFID readers and wireless-network infrastructure to enterprises and
governments.
Selling off the enterprise
mobility business’s cellular-infrastructure operations, said Motorola co-CEO
Greg Brown, “is great news for our customers, our investors and our people and
will allow us to sharpen our strategic focus on providing mission and business
critical solutions for our government, public safety and enterprise
customers.”
The Motorola
business to be sold to Nokia Siemens includes products and services for GSM,
CDMA, WCDMA, WiMAX and LTE cellular networks. Nokia Siemens Networks said the
acquisition would make it the third largest wireless infrastructure vendor in
the United States and the top foreign wireless vendor in Japan while strengthening
its No. 2 position globally in the cellular infrastructure segment.
About 7,500
Motorola employees will transfer to Nokia Siemens Networks, including employees
of large research and development sites in the United States, China and India.
