Motricity looks for all the world like a company that's prepping to go public. It cut staff to keep its operations lean and make them profitable. It hired two prominent investment banks to shepherd it through selling its stock on Wall Street.

And it caught the eye of billionaire financier Carl Icahn. He recently invested $50 million in the Durham company, which provides the technology that helps people buy and receive games, ring tones and music on their mobile phones.

But don't be too surprised if Motricity gets snapped up by a larger company instead. By the time a business is ready for an initial public offering and the scrutiny of regulators and investors, it's also frequently an attractive acquisition candidate.

In Motricity's case, there is already plenty of industry buzz about its product and its clients, which include MTV, BET, NBC and Cingular.

So Motricity stands at diverging paths.

Although an acquisition and a public offering both provide a payback for investors, they could have dramatically different results for the company and the Triangle.

An IPO could raise Motricity's profile, making it the area's biggest tech success story since Red Hat, the largest distributor of the Linux operating system.

With an acquisition, Motricity could become a shell, with leadership transferred elsewhere.

It could add jobs or shed workers.

Local business boosters cross their fingers for IPOs, which seem more likely to keep jobs and executives in a community.

"What we always strive for is the perfect win-win-win, where the company wins, our community wins and then also their shareholders and intellectual property holders win," said Ted Conner, vice president of economic development for the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce.

Sometimes companies acquire businesses for the employees, and they leave the local operation as is, he said. But when companies acquire a business for its contracts or patents, the purchase can have a negative effect on the company and community, Conner said.

But it's not fair to assume that all IPOs are good for the community and all acquisitions are bad, said Kip Frey with Intersouth Partners, a Durham venture capital firm. Some IPOs fail, and that reflects poorly on the community, he said. Likewise, many acquired companies prosper.

Both options create wealth for local shareholders, including, in Motricity's case, its 350 employees in Durham.

A fundraising record

Ryan Wuerch, Motricity's CEO, has been adamant about keeping Motricity a strong North Carolina company that would be the acquirer, rather than the acquired. He has helped it raise a Triangle-record $216 million in private funding to do just that.

Wuerch says that the company's leaders turned down three buyout bids from multibillion-dollar companies in early 2005 to continue building the business themselves.

"We as a company have very firm steps in front of us right now as a stand-alone company," Wuerch said Wednesday.

But Motricity and its board can't rule out the possibility of an acquisition, he said, acknowledging that the company is generating interest.

"As you move through the process and build a great company, you obviously have very large companies that become very interested in what you have developed and the market share you have gained," he said.

At some point, Motricity might receive an offer that's too good to pass up, said Roger Entner, a wireless analyst for IAG Research.

"Everybody's for sale for the right price," he said.

And investors tend to prefer acquisitions to IPOs, which are riskier.

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