Motorola’s slow decline was halted, briefly, by the launch of the Droid line of phones. Now, however, it looks like the company’s money-making switching subsidiary is no longer going to be making money as it’s just been sold to Nokia Siemens for $1.2 billion. While the company still owns its own handset and set-top box operation, the switching side was Motorola’s bread and butter and now it may be going hungry.

With the unit, Nokia Siemens gets 50 large customers like China Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon. Motorola will still own the iDEN “push-to-talk” system but has sold off their manufacturing systems for GSM, WiMax, and LTE switches. In short, Motorola is now a handset manufacture that dabbles in set-top boxes and headphones.

Here’s hoping Moto survives this change. It’s an odd move by an odd company and clearly Schaumburg is betting the farm on their handsets.

Press Release