"Well, it's finally happened; under mounting internal and external pressure, Motorola (NYSE: MOT) has spun off its handset business," says technology stock expert Gregg Early.
This move, he notes, developed after Carl Icahn came in, picked up about 6% of the company, and wanted to shake things up. Here's Gregg's update from his industry-leading The Real Nanontech Investor.
"Motorola's handset division has been lost in the desert since the successful launch of the Razr a couple years ago. Since then, it's lost market share and has been less than imaginative in developing new mobile handsets. This kind of product pipeline strangulation isn't unusual at Moto.
"In the 1990s, the company almost went under because it couldn't quite figure out how to exploit all the great work it was doing in its labs. Getting products to market seems to escape this company.
"It looked like mobile phones were a sector where Moto could make big inroads, and the 'lab to fab' pipeline was working very well-for a few years. Now the No. 2 mobile phone maker is No. 3, having lost its spot to relative newcomer Samsung. And even No. 3 isn't secure if something doesn't happen quickly.
"This has been one of activist investor Carl Icahn's claims regarding the company. Moto is sitting on piles of cash; it has a world-class R&D program, and apparently no one who wanted to do anything bold or even businesslike with either.










