In 2009 Nortel, a Canadian equipment-maker, went bankrupt. This year Motorola's wireless-network division was bought by Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), a Finnish-German joint venture created in 2007.
Last year, Huawei also lost out to Nokia Siemens Networks in a bid for Motorola's wireless assets, and failed to win a bid for 2wire, an internet software firm that went to Pace of the UK instead.