Recently in Motorola Category

As reported by Reuters, Motorola's CEO is personally taking over the perennially awful handset unit...

NEW YORK, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Motorola Inc (MOT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said its Chief Executive Greg Brown was taking direct control of the company's loss-making handset business, replacing Stu Reed, in a move aimed at helping speed up the unit's recovery.

Motorola announced the decision to employees in an internal memo sent on Friday, a day after it announced that it was considering options including a split-off of its mobile unit, which has been losing market share to rivals such as Nokia (NOK1V.HE: Quote, Profile, Research) and Samsung Electronics (005930.KS: Quote, Profile, Research).

Reed, who took over as head of the mobile phone unit last Summer, will stay at Motorola and work closely with Brown, spokeswoman Jennifer Erickson said on Sunday.

Motorola has been criticized for a weak phone line-up and failing to come up with a strong successor to its Razr phone.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Motorola Inc., facing pressure from activist shareholder Carl Icahn, said it may spin off or sell its flagship handset division.The decision is a stunning setback for an American technology icon and offers a parable for other industries. Motorola essentially created mobile telecommunications with the earliest mass-market hand-held radios. But it repeatedly stumbled in keeping up with consumer demand for innovation, while foreign competitors stole away market share

For years and years, Motorola's biggest handset customer was Nextel.  In fact, Motorola was the exclusive handset manufacturer for Nextel.  Until the Razr and its cousins launched a couple of years ago Motorola had been kind of stagnant in the states.  They had the StarTac back in the 90's (this was the first of the "clamshell" style phones, prompting many a caller to flip their phone open Shatner-style) but for about 5 years they didn't produce anything of note to the majority of cell phone users.Now look at this blurb about Samsung:

Documents seen on the FCC site revealed the Samsung Z400, a ruggedized clamshell bound for Sprint. This CDMA EVDO phone will be the first phone to use Qualcomm's QChat PTT technology, which will be branded Direct Connect on the Sprint network. It has dual displays, with an OLED exterior display. It hosts stereo speakers, a camera, Bluetooth, and dual antennas: one at the top and one at the bottom. This phone has not been announced by Sprint or Samsung, so pricing and availability information are not available

For those of you who aren't big ol' nerds like me, Direct Connect is the walkie-talkie service that made Nextel famous.  QChat is slated to take over for that as Sprint and Nextel get closer to being truly merged.My question:  Is it a coincidence that Sprint and Samsung announce the first successor to Direct Connect less than 2 weeks before Motorola starts looking to sell off their handset business?