Nokia Siemens to buy Motorola wireless gear unit

Motorola Inc. said Monday that it is selling most of its wireless network division to Nokia Siemens Networks, a Finnish-German joint venture, for $1.2 billion as part of a planned breakup of the company.


The division supplies wireless carriers such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp. with the equipment they need to connect to cell phones. It's not a big player in an industry dominated by LM Ericsson AB and Alcatel-Lucent, but it does have valuable relationships with U.S. and Japanese carriers that Nokia Siemens hopes to exploit.

About 7,500 employees will be transferred to Nokia Siemens, Motorola said. The company is based in Schaumburg, Ill., but the networks division has large development centers in India and China.  LINK