• Nokia Siemens buys Motorola's switching business for $1.2 billion

    John Biggs

    Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... → Learn More

    Monday, July 19th, 2010

    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

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