Videocon may offer to buy Motorola's mobile phone business

Mumbai: Consumer electronics major Videocon Group may offer to buy Motorola Inc's mobile-phone business as it prepares to roll out wireless services in India, reports quoted Videocon chairman Venugopal Dhoot as saying.

Videocon is in the initial stages of evaluating a bid, Dhoot was quoted as saying.
Motorola has a handset manufacturing facility in Chennai where the company makes both CDMA and GSM mobile phones.

Motorola, under sustained pressure from one of its key investors, Carl Icahn, is hiving off the troubled mobile device business worldwide into a separate company.

Motorola's handset business is valued at around $3.8 billion – double the market value of Videocon Industries Ltd - according to Merrill Lynch & Co. An acquisition would make Videocon the world's third-largest producer after Nokia and Samsung.

Aurangabad-based Videocon in addition to television glass-tube manufacturing is also into oil exploration.

Videocon, which received wireless licences earlier this year, plans to start offering mobile-phone services in India by the end of this year.