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Motorola may spin off mobile-phone unit

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Marguerite Reardon CNET News

Published: 01 Feb 2008 09:39 GMT

Maybe Carl Icahn was right about Motorola.

The company, which practically invented the mobile-phone market in the 1980s, is considering spinning off its beleaguered handset business in an effort to revive itself, Motorola said on Thursday.

In a press release, the company said it was considering a "structural realignment" to kick-start its mobile-device business, which has seen its global market share plunge to 12 percent from more than 20 percent a year ago. The main problem has been Motorola's inability to come up with new handsets to follow the once highly popular Razr.

Last week, the company told investors it would take longer than expected to turn around its troubled mobile-phone business. And it warned that revenue and market share would probably decline further in the first quarter.

Icahn, the activist investor who has been critical of Motorola's management for more than a year, has encouraged the company to break up, separating the handset division.

"For many months I have been publicly advocating the separation of mobile devices from Motorola's other business," Icahn said in a statement. "And I am pleased to see that Motorola is finally exploring that proposal."

Icahn, who lost his bid to win a Motorola board seat last year, said on Thursday that he still plans to go through with yet another proxy fight this year to win board seats.

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"We have previously informed Motorola that we expect to run a slate of directors for the upcoming annual meeting," Icahn said, "and this announcement by Motorola will not deter us from that effort. We believe Motorola is finally moving in the right direction, but certainly still has a long way to go."

Wall Street reacted positively to the news of a possible split in the company and boosted Motorola's share price 10 percent to $12.65 (£6.35) in after-hours trading. But some industry analysts said that simply selling the handset division could be a bad idea for the company, which has spent billions of dollars over the past several years building its consumer brand.

"The question is: if you sell off the handset business, what's left?" said Iain Gillott of iGillott Research. "It doesn't make sense for them to have spent so much money developing their consumer brand if they're going to use it to sell set-top boxes and emergency radios."

One-hit wonder?
Four years ago, Motorola struck gold with its popular, ultra-thin Razr, which launched in 2004. That product helped Motorola increase its market share from 15 percent to 23 percent by the end of 2006. But, after the phone became available on all four major cellular networks in the US and the company cut prices, its margins plummeted. Since then, Motorola hasn't found a high-end handset to replace the Razr and boost revenue and profit margins.

While the Razr franchise has been viewed as a tremendous success, executives have been criticised for allowing the product to become commoditised and for not coming up with another hit phone. The company's poor performance ultimately led to the ousting of chief executive Ed Zander in November. He was replaced earlier this month with Greg Brown.

Meanwhile, Motorola has tried to revive its lineup of phones. In May it introduced several new products that added functionality such as…