Motorola's fourth-quarter earnings report released Tuesday, Feb. 3, wasn't anything to write home about.

The handset manufacturer is suspending its quarterly dividend and lost about $3.6 billion in revenue last quarter. Its sales were down 26 percent year-over-year. Regardless, the company's executives remain optimistic.

"We continue to take appropriate action to address the downturn in the global economy as well as the challenges related to our current Mobile Devices portfolio," said Sanjay Jha, Motorola's co-CEO and head of the company's mobile devices unit, Schaumburg, IL, during the earnings call.

"We are aggressively developing innovative new products and we are encouraged by the positive customer feedback on our smartphone roadmap," he said.

Motorola's mobile devices segment sales were $2.35 billion, down 51 percent compared with the year-ago quarter.

The operating loss was $595 million, including $119 million of highlighted items, compared to an operating loss of $388 million in the year-ago quarter.

For the full year 2008, sales were $12.1 billion, a 36 percent decrease compared to 2007, and the segment incurred an operating loss of $2.2 billion, compared to an operating loss of $1.2 billion in 2007.

During the quarter, the company shipped 19.2 million handsets and estimates its share of the global handset market was 6.5 percent.

In terms of mobile devices, Motorola continued to make progress on the smartphone roadmap. The company claims it is on target to launch next-generation devices during the fourth quarter of 2009.

In 2008 Motorola reports launching 15 new phones, including six GSM devices, one 3G device, five CDMA phones and three iDEN handsets.

In the next few months, Motorola is planning the global rollout of the Aura luxury phone, Motorola Krave ZN4 full-touch phone and QA30 Hint messaging slider.

Additionally, Motorola has announced plans to further reduce cost structure. The company expects cost savings totaling more than $1.2 billion in 2009.

The earnings report isn't the only bad news that Motorola is facing.

Last quarter the company announced 3,000 layoffs. The handset manufacturer now plans to lay off another 4,000 employees, mostly from its mobile device business.

With news like this, it is hard to believe that Motorola was once the world's second-largest handset manufacturer.

"In light of the economic climate and challenges we face, we have implemented aggressive measures to reduce costs and improve financial flexibility, particularly in mobile devices," Mr. Jha said.

"The cost-reduction actions underway are expected to generate aggregate savings of approximately $1.5 billion in 2009," he said.