Motorola Handsets Pining For The Fjords

If you're old, you have a soft spot for Motorola. Plenty of people still remember Motorola vacuum tubes, and all sorts of hobbyists remember buying semiconductors and various electronic components for their projects with the spiky Motorola "M" logo on them. Lots of people are walking around with Motorola phones in their pockets, too -- yours truly included. But Motorola is being dragged down by the handset portion of their business, and are planning on splitting the company into two separate publicly traded companies to lose the cellphone albatross from around their neck.

Motorola has been losing handset market share and is now ranked third in the world. The two entities it plans to split into are Mobile Devices, and Broadband & Mobility Solutions. The latter consists of its network equipment, enterprise and public safety businesses.

It said the creation of two companies would improve flexibility, increase management focus and provide more targeted investment opportunities for shareholders.

Motorola Chief Executive Greg Brown said in a statement that the company has started a global search for a new CEO for the mobile devices business.

If you were in an overloaded lifeboat in the middle of the ocean, taking on water, and the captain looked at you funny and said he had an idea to improve flexibility, increase focus, and target resources towards a select share of remaining stakeholders, what he really means is you're going to get very wet very fast.