Motorola Inc. announced a quarterly net loss on Oct. 30 of nearly $400 million and said it was postponing the spinoff of its troubled cell phone unit. The largest U.S. mobile phone manufacturer said that it suffered a net loss of $397 million in the third quarter of the year after reporting a net profit of $60 million for the same period last year.
The company lowered its forecast for the rest of the year and said it would carry out cost-cutting moves next year expected to result in annual savings of some $800 million. It said separation of the struggling mobile phone unit from the rest of the company was now "targeted beyond 2009."
"While our strategic intent to separate the company remains intact, we are no longer targeting the third quarter of 2009," said Sanjay Jha, Motorola co-chief executive and head of its mobile devices division.
The world's fourth-largest mobile phone maker reported third-quarter sales of $7.5 billion, down 15% from the same period last year.
It said sales of mobile devices totaled $3.1 billion in the quarter, down 31% from a year ago, and the unit rang up an operating loss of $840 million compared with a loss of $248 million a year ago.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2008
