How could Motorola’s spin-off of its mobile devices unit affect the mobile content industry? In today’s conference call on the split, CEO Greg Brown noted that “customers want to see Motorola (NYSE: MOT) succeed for competitive reasons.” Brown, of course, was alluding to the overwhelming dominance that its Finnish rival Nokia (NYSE: NOK) now enjoys in the handset market: 40 percent and growing. Nokia is trailed by Samsung—which, in second place, only manages 14 percent, not even half of Nokia’s share. Motorola, meanwhile, is in third at 12 percent.

Nokia’s dominance presents all sorts of pressures on operators; they’ve been nervous for some time about Nokia’s foray into mobile content, which they have always considered their territory, and theirs alone. In the early days of the mobile web, they were able to force Nokia to shut down its early web service Club Nokia, such was their discontent and power to do something about it. But that was then. Nearly a decade later, they’ve only been able to grumble and look on glumly as Nokia has gone on to launch various content endeavors, such as its music store in the UK and Germany, Ovi, its mobile portal, N-Gage, its mobile gaming service, and its impending Comes With Music service. It has also been on a spending spree—such as its recent proposed acquisition of Navteq, the digital map maker, to offer even more services. How will Nokia’s dominance in the handset market affect the mobile content market and could a worthy rival have done anything to temper some of its recent content moves?

Motorola has had mobile content aspirations of its own—most prominently its 2005 deal with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) to create the Rokr handset, which was the first mobile phone to be integrated with the iTunes music store. But since falling into disarray, its mobile content strategy has been put on the backburner. In February, at the Mobile World Congress, Samsung announced it, too, would launch an internet-services strategy for its handsets, though did not offer more detail. Plus, Samsung is having troubles of its own: while sales are up, margins have been going down. Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) has its PlayNow music service, but it announced recently that it expected handset sales in Europe, its biggest customer base, to slow.

Of course, operators see all mobile content from handset makers as competition, and it is still very early days on Nokia’s content efforts, but a little competition from the other device makers might have at least given the operators some time to get their own services in order. There’s no denying now that Nokia has a real leg up on its rivals in mobile content, and given that Motorola is not spinning its mobile devices off until 2009 and its ongoing spat with Carl Icahn, the continued disarray can only help the Finnish handset maker and their content efforts.

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