Even spun off, Motorola’s mobile-phone unit may not stage a comeback
SOMETIMES the parts are worth more than the whole. This is the hope of Motorola, a faded telecoms giant, which will split itself in two on January 4th. But will this break-up indeed create value? Investors are not worried about the pedestrian parts of Motorola’s business, which include emergency-services radios and hand-held scanners, and which will be hived off into a firm called Motorola Solutions. The problem is the other half, Motorola Mobility, a maker of mobile phones and TV set-top boxes.
Motorola’s mobile-phone business has been struggling since its RAZR handsets fell out of fashion in the late 2000s. The unit recently staged something of a comeback by betting on smartphones running Android, an operating system developed by Google. Motorola’s Droid models, in particular, have seen a measure of success. In the third quarter the unit made its first profit in three years. …
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