The precipitous decline of Motorola’s mobile phone business, once ranked second in the world after Nokia, has meant that the group’s less-glamorous non-handset operations have increasingly had to prop up the US telecoms company.

Just two years ago, Motorola’s mobile devices division buoyed by the success of the Razr phone, accounted for almost 70 per cent of the company’s $42.8bn in annual sales, contributed $2.69bn in operating profits and commanded almost 23 per cent of the global mobile phone market.