Motorola Solutions Targets $1 Billion Public-Network Orders
April 05, 2011, 4:22 PM EDTBy Hugo Miller
(Updates share price in seventh paragraph.)
April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Motorola Solutions Inc., having spun off its mobile-phone unit, is focusing on winning contracts for public-safety communications networks worth more than $1 billion in the U.S. and Middle East, its chief executive officer said.
The company has won two contracts to build emergency networks using faster LTE, or long-term evolution, technology in California and Texas and is investing in the business to be among the leaders when “broadband becomes a reality to public safety,” CEO Greg Brown said.
“We’ve identified projects that are a billion plus in the funnel that we have to work on and close in the next few years,” Brown said today in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia are among the markets the Schaumburg, Illinois-based company is focusing on, he said.
Brown said he’s free to concentrate on that business and spend more time with customers after completing the spinoff of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. as a separate, publicly traded company. Since the Jan. 4 split, Motorola Mobility has dropped 21 percent on the New York Stock Exchange while Motorola Solutions has climbed 18 percent.
“One of the best things about the separation is it highlights Motorola Solutions and what we do,” he said. Brown, 50, was previously co-CEO of Motorola Inc. alongside Sanjay Jha, who now heads Motorola Mobility.
“When Motorola was together and we would talk about the business, it would be 90 percent about cellphones and smartphones and tablets,” Brown said.
Motorola Solutions fell 13 cents to $44.17 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
China Deal Review
Brown is also trying to dispose of the company’s mobile- phone network equipment business in a $1.2 billion sale to Nokia Siemens Networks, announced in July. While the deal has been approved by U.S. and European Union regulators, the Chinese government has extended its review of the transaction by another 60 days, Nokia Siemens said March 9.
Nokia Siemens, a joint venture between Nokia Oyj and Siemens AG, is seeking to renegotiate the deal, two people close to the situation said last month. The company wants to exclude the Global System for Mobile communications, or GSM, unit from the acquisition and renegotiate the price accordingly in order to win China’s approval, one of the people said.
Brown declined to comment on whether Nokia Siemens has asked for renegotiations. He reiterated that Motorola Solutions aims to close the deal by the end of June, while stopping short of saying he’s certain it will happen by then.
“We are trying to close the deal and we are hopeful we can get that done,” Brown said. “We will see ultimately what happens and what is required.”
Huawei Dispute
Huawei Technologies Co., China’s biggest maker of telecommunications equipment, sued Motorola and Nokia Siemens Jan. 24, saying Motorola hadn’t provided assurances that it would prevent disclosures about Huawei technology and products to Nokia Siemens. Motorola has sold Huawei’s wireless-network products under the Motorola name since 2000.
Motorola Solutions agreed to protect Huawei’s intellectual property as part of the terms of their contract and will abide by that even if assets are sold, Brown said.
“Of course we’d protect the confidentiality of any nature associated with that joint venture,” he said. “As a result, we shouldn’t be limited in our ability to transfer or sell those assets.”
--With assistance from Serena Saitto and Betty Liu in New York. Editors: Ville Heiskanen, Peter Elstrom
To contact the reporter on this story: Hugo Miller in Toronto at hugomiller@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at pelstrom@bloomberg.net
