Satyam Buys Motorola’s Malaysian Software Development Center

Well, Motorola’s been in a lot of trouble, and were earlier reported to be in talks with Videocon for selling their handsets business. It appears that the company has sold its sofware development center in Cyberjaya to Satyam. The Kuala Lumpur based center has 128 employees, and will strengthen Satyam’s capabilities to cater to Network Equipment Providers and telecom operators, according to Nishith Mathur, head of Satyam’s Technology Infrastructure business unit.

The center was part of Motorola’s $2.4 billion Home and Networks Mobility business, which produces digital entertainment devices for HD/DVR and IPTV. This sale is a part of a restructuring at Motorola, wherein the business is also being split into broadband home solutions, broadband access solutions and cellular networks.

The deal should be completed by December 31st, after which, Motorola will contract Satyam for development services for its network management software. The US based handset manufacturer had reported a 15 percent decline in sales for Q3, and net loss of $397 million (pdf).

Industry Moves: Motorola Handset Div CEO; Sony Ericsson India President

Motorola’s struggling handset division business has a new CEO: Sanjay Jha has been appointed co-CEO of Motorola, and the CEO of the Mobile Devices business. The 45 year old, India-born Jha, who was previously the COO of Qualcomm, will have the grueling task of turning around the loss making unit, which will be de-merged in the second half of 2009. Motorola has consistently lost marketshare after failing to find a replacement for the MotoRazr; in fact, from an Indian context, there were reports that Videocon was in talks for acquiring their handset division.

Anil Sethi has been appointed to the newly created position of President and Region Head of Sony Ericsson India. He joins after 8 years at Sony Canada, where he was SVP for Broadcast & Business Solutions and Systems Integration. He has been involved with Sony India before - establishing and managing Sony’s first production facility in India. Sethi has been involved in other assignments in the Sony Group at senior business roles, in Europe, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Motorola Launches MOTOMUSIC In India With MOTOROKR E8

So almost six months after struggling handset manufacturer Motorola acquired online and mobile music distribution company Soundbuzz, Motorola has launched music distribution service MotoMusic in India. MotoMusic powers the MOTOROKR E8, two versions of which are priced at Rs. 15.455 and Rs. 13,999 respectively. The launch of MotoMusic is significant, since it comes before the launch of Nokia’s content service Ovi.

Value Chain: This is what the value chain looks like, with a handset manufacturer also becoming a content aggregator. This should, ideally, result in increasing efficiencies, and hence offer a greater margin to Motorola:

Pricing, Distribution and content partners: (more…)