Motorola Mobility Holdings, maker of the Droid and Defy smartphones, has completed a spinoff from parent company Motorola, the company announced Tuesday.
Shares of Motorola Mobility began tracking on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday under the ticker symbol MMI. Parent company Motorola has changed its named to Motorola Solutions, and it will focus on providing next-generation communications products to government, enterprise and public safety customers, according to information from the company.
Motorola Mobility will have a mobile devices division and a home division. The mobile devices division will continue to focus on creating new smartphones, such as the Droid, Bravo, Defy and Flipside phones it rolled out in 2010, the company said in a press release.
The home division will focus on marketing digital set-top boxes and video products. Motorola Mobility will also sell tablet devices, the company said.
Motorola Mobility will have more than 20,000 employees and own about 24,500 patents, the company said.
The companies have been planning the spinoff for about two years, Sanjay Jha , Motorola Mobility’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement. The new company will be in a good position to “take advantage of opportunities resulting from the convergence of media, mobility, computing and the Internet,” Jha added.
Motorola stockholders as of Dec. 21, 2010, will receive one share of Motorola Mobility stock for every eight shares of Motorola common stock they held.
Motorola Mobility shares were trading at US$32.78 by late morning Tuesday on the East Coast, after opening at $31.17.