Motorola co-CEO Greg Brown has said that the vendor will look to expand its government and corporate mobility businesses – possibly via acquisitions – once the long-awaited spin-off of its mobile phone unit is completed. “Fast forward the tape 12 to 24 months, I think it’s fair to say we would evaluate opportunities that we thought were pretty compelling,” Brown said in an interview with Bloomberg. Motorola announced last year that its loss-making handset division – led by Motorola’s other co-CEO, Sanjay Jha – would be split from the parent group, allowing Motorola to refocus on other areas. Sales at Motorola’s government and corporate business dropped 15 percent in the first half of the year as companies froze spending due to the recession, but handset sales fell at three times that rate, notes Bloomberg.

“Most people that have invested in Motorola over the years have been paying attention to the handsets,” said Matt Thornton, an analyst at Avian Securities. While the government and corporate business does not attract as much scrutiny [as handsets], it’s “the most valuable asset in the portfolio,” he said. Brown said that the sale of the handset unit had been delayed for a year due to the economic situation, and noted that the timing of the break-up will hinge on the economic recovery and how the handset division’s new products perform. Any acquisitions in the government or enterprise space would occur after the split is completed, he said. “If I think of Microsoft, I think of enterprise desktop computing; if I think of Cisco, I think of enterprise infrastructure…If I talk about enterprise mobility, I think that territory has yet to be staked out, it’s a golden opportunity for Motorola.”