Motorola buys Symbol Tech.

My guess is we take the money.... John the Builder, what say ye? September 20, 2006 Motorola Buys Symbol Technologies to Widen Reach By KEN BELSON Aiming to expand its position outside the cellphone market, Motorola said yesterday that it would pay $3.9 billion for Symbol Technologies, a maker of scanners and other wireless technology used by manufacturers, retailers and wholesalers. With growth in the retail cellphone market starting to show signs of slowing, handset makers like Motorola are looking for ways to sell more of their wireless technology to corporate customers and governments. To do that, Motorola hopes to tap Symbol.s customer list, which includes Coca-Cola, FedEx and the United States Postal Service, to sell scanning devices and hand-held computers for warehouses and also the wireless networks, walkie-talkies and mobile phones that Motorola makes. .It.s a customer base to die for,. said Gregory Q. Brown, president of Motorola.s Networks and Enterprise business. .The story today is not a cellular handset story. It.s about expanding the product portfolio beyond cellular handsets.. Motorola will pay Symbol shareholders $15 a share in cash, 18 percent more than the company.s closing price of $12.71 last Friday, before speculation about a possible merger arose. Shares of Symbol rose 8 cents yesterday, to $14.75 in regular trading. Motorola.s stock fell 2 cents, to $24.93. If the deal closes by early next year, as the companies expect, Motorola will become one of the largest sellers of hand-held scanners and devices that connect to networks wirelessly. In 2005, Symbol, which has its headquarters in Holtsville, N.Y., had sales of $1.8 billion, a 1.9 percent increase from 2004. The company earned $32.2 million in profits, 61 percent less than in 2004. The addition of Symbol would more than double Motorola.s business selling hand-held computers, radio frequency identification tags and other equipment used to track products in factories, warehouses and in stores, Mr. Brown said. Motorola, which is based in Schaumburg, Ill., has also been producing more phones for white-collar workers who want to gain access to the Internet and e-mail outside the office. The company.s line of .Q. phones aims to rival Research in Motion, which makes the popular BlackBerry, and Palm, which makes Treo. By combining these phones with Symbol.s handsets, Motorola could make even bigger inroads into the market serving corporate customers, analysts said. .They need Symbol.s brand recognition and technology to leapfrog Nokia,. said Christin Armacost, a telecommunications analyst at Lazard Capital Markets. At the same time, she said, .Motorola is going to bring their carrier relationships to help Symbol.. The companies, though, have some overlapping technology, and they will have to create software that allows their various devices to speak to each other, industry analysts said. They must also consider how or whether to put scanning technology on Motorola phones, which are considerably smaller than Symbol.s hand-held devices. Still, with Symbol, Motorola could become the only company capable of bridging the gap between mobile phones and local area networks in homes, offices and elsewhere. Motorola, for instance, could put readers in cellphones so that shoppers scan items as they put them in their baskets, effectively creating an EZ pass for the supermarket or department store and eliminating check-out lines. .If they tackle that, the Internet goes airborne,. said Eric Austvold, an analyst at AMR Research. .It.s very George Jetson.. -- ------------------------------ * * Dr. James Lee Ellingson, Adjunct Professor jellings(a)me.umn.edu * * University of Minnesota, tel: 651/645-0753 fax 651 XXX XXXX * * Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *