Motorola Names Sanjay Jha Head Of Handset Division
From:http://www.electronics-in-china.com/buy-phone/
Key words: cell phone, radio, telecommunication
Motorola Inc. on Monday named Sanjay Jha, the chief operating officer of Qualcomm, to head its handset division. The unit is being prepared for a spin-off as a separate public company.
Jha will also be co-chief executive of the parent company, sharing the responsibility with incumbent Greg Brown. Brown will take responsibility for Motorola's other two divisions.
Jha headed up the Qualcomm division that made chips for cell phones.
Motorola shares were up 74 cents, or 8.4 percent, at $9.55 in premarket trading Monday.
Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola's handset division has been posting heavy losses for the last few years. Brown has controlled the unit directly since early this year. Stu Reed, its last president, left the company in March.
Also in March, Motorola said it would split off the cell-phone division from the ones that make set-top boxes, cable modems, police radios and other telecommunications gear.
The handset unit had a smash hit with the Razr phone in 2004 and 2005, but has been unable to produce a follow-up of the same popularity. However, Motorola last week announced that it had reversed a trend of declining sales and shipped 28.1 million cell phones in the second quarter, up from 27 million in the first.
Motorola executives have emphasized the complex nature of the spin-off, saying that the handset unit shares 150 facilities with other units, and analysts have questioned whether it's worth the expense. Last week, Motorola said the process should be complete by the third quarter next year.
At Qualcomm, executive vice president Len Lauer, formerly the chief operating officer of Sprint Nextel Corp., replaces Jha as COO. Jha's position as president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, or QCT, will be filled by the EVP of the unit, Steve Mollenkopf.