Motorola’s Q4 mobile division earnings tumble 34%

Yikes! We’ve been losing sleep at night, worrying that we’ve been a bit harsh on old Motorola. They see to have gottent the short end of the publicity stick, having been accused of riding RAZR V3 design wave into a mess of stale product launches and poor earnings reports. That said, the company has appeared to make some decent strides forward as of late, releasing a shockingly good successor to the V3 in the RAZR 2, and dropping what may have been the sleeper handset of the year in the Motorola Q9. With things pointing in a positive direction, we expected the company’s 4th quarter earnings report to be a bit more…positive. Unfortunately, the stars have yet to fully align. Moto’s mobile division announced that their sales dropped a full 34% during the 4th quarter of 2007. This amounts to a $388 million loss, compared to a $341 loss during the same time period in 2006. The company didn’t give any indication as to what they thought might have accounted for the savage drop, but they’re going to need to figure it out if they hope to remain a player in this wild and crazy game of mobile phones.

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