Motorola Corp. (NYSE: MOT) is apparently planning on a rather large piece of its wireless business being wrapped around Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android operating system. The wireless company already has 50 employees working on Android development and will be boosting that number to 350 before long. Since Motorola is one of the larger members of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), the open-source software movement meant to support all things Android, this comes as no surprise.

Perhaps Motorola wants some revenue from software development for the mobile space instead of selling profit-challenged hardware? The company has had a rough time of things recently, but after spinning off its handset division soon, Motorola wireless hardware and software may be on the path to re-inventing themselves.

But can Google's vaunted wireless platform challenge the entrenched iPhone, Windows Mobile and Symbian space? Together, those three platforms control a huge swath of the smartphone market. Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), which now owns all of Symbian, has the lion's share of smartphone software sales globally. The newer iPhone 3G has launched in dozens of countries and continues to sell very well. Let's not count out Windows Mobile. Even Google may find it hard to take large pieces of market share away from these players. But at least Motorola is only placing a small bet here on Android's success. Three hundred fifty employees isn't too many, is it?

As Doug reported on earlier, Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) is searching feverishly for a possible CEO to lead the company that will be created when it spins off its cellphone division. The only problem is that the candidates aren't just lining up for this one. Respected turnaround executive Todd Bradly said yesterday he would not be leaving his post as Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ) for the top job at Motorola. And this is from a guy who has made a habit of taking the reigns of troubled companies and turning them around very successfully.

It's hard to completely understand why Motorola's cellphone division went from shining start just a few years ago to a complete and total mess. Former CEO Ed Zander blames former cellphone division head Ron Garriques, who bolted for Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) in January 2007 just as Motorola's long slide down to insignificance and missed profits was just beginning to take hold. Did Garriques time his exit almost perfectly? It sure seems that way, but the mess that he left behind was either his own doing or was partly the fault (if not completely) of Zander, who ended up resigning under pressure as a result.

It's hard to see how Motorola can completely turn around its cellphone business, even if that part is indeed spun off into a separate company. It's a textbook story of how, within just a few years, a company can go from best to worst as it misfired on about every possible front. It's been in a rut before, such as the 1990s when it missed the transition to digital cellphones and gave up tons of marketshare to rival Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK). This will be a lot harder for someone to fix, although it's a massive and unique opportunity. If Bradley won't bite, though, who will?