Still, for all of Jha's experience, he faces one huge challenge: Motorola's corporate culture. For the cell-phone unit to recover, Jha will have to fully cleanse Motorola of its sluggish, bureaucratic ways and teach a company that has long let engineers drive product development to think more like marketers, in tune with consumer tastes. It's a challenge that has proved insurmountable for several top Motorola executives.

After the cell phone giant reported a profit and better-than-expected cell phone shipments in the second quarter, its stock climbed 12.5% to close at $8.64. Speculation that Motorola would keep the cell phone business and spin off other units started earlier this week, when Motorola announced it will reorganize its home and networks mobility unit into three divisions.

...Motorola's ability to gain share is being hampered as rivals including Apple (AAPL) and Research in Motion (RIMM) step up their attack on the market for smartphones, multifeatured handsets that deliver e-mail, productivity applications, and other advanced services. Motorola has yet to deliver AT&T an update to its smartphone, the Q, which debuted in 2007. In roughly the same time frame, Apple has delivered two versions of its popular iPhone....

Wi-LAN Inc., the Canadian technology licensing company, has added LG, the Korean electronics giant, to a growing list of big industry players that it is taking to court. LG joins Motorola, Research in Motion and UTStarCom to the group of wireless handset makers that Wi-LAN believes are infringing its wireless patents.

Thanks to good performances of high-end touch screen phones in the key North American and European markets, LG Electronics is widely expected to beat Motorola to become the world's No. 3 phone maker in the second quarter. According to industry estimates including market research firm Strategy Analytics, the South Korean company will sell a maximum of 29 million phones in the April-June period, while Motorola of the United States is forecast to sell some 28 million.

...Today, wireless operators control content, but the power they wield is in subsidies for handsets. When Apple came along with its iPhone, it changed the trend. It told operators, 'Get lost, don't subsidize and don't tell us what to do. We can sell the handset with no problem and give unlimited Internet access.' The wireless companies are trying to stop it but WiMAX will change things. Content is king, so wireless networks are the ones that supply the pipeline. They're not interesting in the least."...

The WiMax Forum has issued its first certifications for mobile-centric products that operate around the 2.5GHz frequency, and said it will start certifying 3.5GHz products later this year. The organization announced that 10 mobile WiMax products had received the "WiMax Forum Certified Seal of Approval". Four base stations, from Alvarion, Motorola, Samsung and Sequans, won certification, along with mobile modules from Intel, Samsung, Beceem, Airspan and Zyxel.