Motorola splits

US vendor Motorola plans to split up in early 2011, spinning off its handsets and set top box unit into one entity and its enterprise and networks arm into another.

The company, which is already running the organisational equivalent of Ned’s Atomic Dustbin’s two bass line up, with dual CEOs, will place Sanjay Jha as chief executive officer of the Mobile Devices and Home businesses effective immediately. Meanwhile, Greg Brown will head up Motorola’s Enterprise Mobility Solutions and Networks businesses effective immediately.

Following the separation, both entities will use the Motorola brand.

Motorola reorganised its business into three units in mid-2008; handsets, infrastructure, and set top boxes but a divesture of the handsets unit has long been anticipated, although no potential buyers have made themselves known. Not publicly anyway.

The company has had a bit of a resurgence on the back of its decision to use Android as a mobile handset platform, with the Droid boasting major success. Motorola, which once held the second spot and now sits in fourth in the handset market posted an awesome fourth quarter in 2009. Net earnings hit $142m, up from a loss of $3.6bn in the same period in 2008. But revenues for the same period dipped from $7bn to $5.7bn in the fourth quarter of 2009.

During the company’s financial conference Jha said that the company would launch 20 new smartphones in 2010, including one direct to consumer device designed for and branded by Google – the follow up to HTC’s Nexus One.