Motorola took a "significant" minority stake in China's top semiconductor maker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), and sold the company a little used chip plant in Tianjin, the two firms said.
The announcement came a week after Motorola, the world's second-largest cellphone maker, signed deals to sell Chinese telecoms companies US$1.1 billion of equipment.
The plant in Tianjin was estimated to have cost more than US$1 billion to build, but had lain largely dormant as global chip prices plunged during the industry's worst-ever downturn.