Though both companies refused to comment, Siemens is known to have little affection for its loss-making telecoms unit, and chief executive Klaus Kleinfeld is anxious to divest the conglomerate of such a cyclical operation.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung said Motorola wanted to buy only the profitable mobile network division, but Siemens is insisting that it must take the whole unit, which has sales of13bn euros ($15.9bn) and 55,000 employees.
In its first quarter to December 31, the Com unit saw sales increase by 10%, though this reduced to 3% when currency translation effects are taken into account, to 3.4bn euros ($4.2bn).
However, profit fell 13% to 323m euros ($396.8m) but this included a 356m euros ($437.4m) profit from the sale of shares in Juniper Networks.
