Motorola unplugs Cambridge TTPCom unit

Less than 2 years after paying more than £100 million for Cambridge-based TTPCom Motorola is shutting down the offices and consulting with employees about their futures, the company confirmed in a statement.

Half the staff were laid off in January, so the rest will hardly have had time to catch their breath before receiving the news yesterday.

Luckily Cambridge still has plenty of opportunities for the kind of staff who worked at TTPCom and they're likely to vanish pretty quickly: leaving Motorola with little to show for their investment.

Motorola said it had been reviewing its Mobile Devices division since early 2007 and: "As a result of the company’s comprehensive review of its product portfolio, Motorola has determined that it is no longer viable to maintain operations at its Cambridge facility. Accordingly, Motorola has informed Cambridge employees of its intent to close the software activities based in Cambridge and to enter into a consultation process with those employees starting April 22nd."

Back when Motorola absorbed TTPCom one of the biggest areas of interest was the latter's technology in UMA (Universal Mobile Access - handsets that could roam between Wi-Fi and cellular networks) which has since resolutely failed to set the world alight. Motorola also gained access to TTPCom's software platform, though we've already noted the company has something of an excess of those.

TTPCom did provide Motorola with some ownership of ip.access, the Femtocell company in which Motorola is still heavily involved. That ownership should yet be profitable, but not for any to-be-devolved Motorola Handset company.