Motorola challenges BlackBerry with Three Laws Mobility buy

Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., the mobile-phone maker spun off from Motorola Inc., bought business software maker Three Laws Mobility Inc., aiming to woo corporate customers with alternatives to the BlackBerry smartphone.

3LM, as the company is known, was acquired at the end of last year for an undisclosed sum, Libertyville-based Motorola said in a statement today. The company's software, for security and managing mobile devices, will be shipped with Motorola phones in the second quarter, Christy Wyatt, corporate vice president for software and services, said in an interview.

Corporations are testing Apple Inc.'s iPhone and devices such as Motorola's Droid that run on Google Inc.'s Android software as alternatives to Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry for corporate e-mail. Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. are among those considering whether to let their staff use BlackBerry alternatives, three people familiar with the plans said in November.

The 3LM software is already being tested with a number of Fortune 100 companies, Wyatt said, adding that she continues to get unsolicited e-mails asking about the software.

Motorola Mobility will announce tomorrow the names of other Android-based handset makers to whom it will license the software, she said. The advantages of fostering Android adoption among companies outweighs the risk of sharing the software with rivals, she said.

“If we cooperate we can open up the business market to Android,” she said.

HTC Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. both sell Android phones in the U.S.

Motorola Mobility fell $1.30, or 4.2 percent, to $29.85 at 11:58 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.