Motorola said Sanjay Jha, the former COO of Qualcomm, is now the CEO of its wireless handset division.

It won’t be an easy job.  The division has been for sale since this spring and will become an independent public company by the middle of next year, officials previously said.  Jha will have to steer the ship through the complicated transition.

The company recently fell to the third spot in handset market share, behind dominant Nokia and second-place Samsung, with LG Electronics in a very close fourth place.

Before moving into management at Qualcomm, where he was president of the CDMA Technologies division, Jha held engineering roles at Brooktree and GEC Hirst Research Labs.  He has a Ph.D. in electronic and electrical engineering from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland.

In addition to leading the wireless handset group, Jha is now co-CEO of the whole company, sharing duties with Greg Brown.