If there's a "strategic suggestions" box at the headquarters of Motorola Inc., it's filling up fast, but not necessarily with well considered ideas. The latest cure for the company (which lost its position in the cell-phone market and then its CEO) turned up on Marketwatch Tuesday morning, in the form of an analyst's speculation about Motorola exiting the cell-phone handset business. Trouble is, the piece noted, this likely wouldn't work, since prospective Chinese acquirers lack the requisite software and platform skills.

OK, let's just file that one. What else is in the box? Ah, yes -- unlocking value through a breakup, with cash returned to shareholders.

Activist investor Carl Icahn has lobbied for that kind of change since he began publicly buying up shares in January of 2007. Analysts speculated he could pressure the company to abandon diversification tactics beyond cell phones, The Deal's Andrea Orr wrote last year. Icahn battled for a board seat, ultimately losing as shareholders kept in place its sitting board, but the campaign may have helped bring about the ouster of then-CEO Ed Zander in November. As Orr noted, Icahn cheered the news and argued the company should split into four: mobile devices, enterprise mobility, the digital home and mobile network infrastructure.

As Reuters pointed out Dec. 6, CFO Tom Meredith did not rule out a breakup of the company: "I believe there's every opportunity for us to create significant economic value as a whole. Does that mean other options aren't viable? Not at all," the outlet quoted him as saying on a Webcast.

Motorola's last deal was a divestiture in September, the $350 million sale of its Embedded Communications Computing unit to Emerson Electric Co. - Carolyn Murphy

Go to Marketwatch story
Go to TheDeal.com story on Icahn's invesetment
Go to TheDeal.com story on Zander's ouster
Go to Reuters item
Go to TheDeal.com story on ECC

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