Motorola Considers San Diego, Other Cities, for Mobile Spin Off Headquarters

Motorola (NYSE: [[ticker:MOT]]), the mobile communications technology giant based in Schaumburg, IL, is scouting sites in Chicago, Dallas, and California for the headquarters of its cell phone spinoff set for next year, according to Crain’s Chicago Business. San Diego is among the California cities under consideration, according to an interview with Motorola co-chief executive (and former Qualcomm COO) Sanjay Jha that was published yesterday in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Motorola recruited Jha in 2008 as its turnaround man, naming him co-CEO and head of its mobile phone and cable set-top box businesses. The company initially planned a spin off in late 2008, a split that got postponed until 2011. Motorola’s core infrastructure business (which makes wireless network gear and police radios) will remain in Schaumburg.

Jha also has suggested Silicon Valley as a possible headquarters for the new company, citing the deep pool of high-tech talent during an interview three months ago. In Sunday’s Union-Tribune interview, Jha says a key factor in deciding where the mobile and spinoff should be located depends on how much business it does in China.

“In San Diego, we already have a very big facility,” Jha told the Union-Tribune. “As you know, I have the mobile business as well as the set-top box business. The set-top box business has very deep roots in San Diego. I think my links to San Diego, if anything, deepened as a result of having that business.

“But I don’t know that we have made that decision. Is San Diego a possibility? When we get engaged with it, we’ll definitely consider San Diego. My family, you know, still lives there. I have a special place for San Diego in heart.”

I sent queries to several Motorola public relations staffers by e-mail earlier today, but they didn’t immediately respond. The company did issue a statement today in its home media market, which was picked up by the website Chicago Breaking Business, which is affiliated with the Chicago Tribune and WGN.

“If Mobile Devices and Home make the decision to relocate its headquarters, this would affect less than 200 people and would not occur in 2010,” the company said in a statement. Motorola has more than 10,000 employees in the Chicago area. The company’s mobile devices division is currently based near Chicago, in Libertyville, IL.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.