Although various analysts have predicted that Motorola will fall to the fourth or fifth place in the global handset industry, the American company remains on the third place when it comes to the number of mobile phones shipped in the second quarter of this year. Moto has issued today its financial results for the timeframe in question and, although it's not as good as in the previous years, it's still far from what many have expected.

The overall income of Motorola for Q2 2008 is reported to be of $8.1 billion, while the net profits are of $4 million. Of course, the $8.1 billion sales come from all of Moto's three major businesses: the Home and Networks Mobility, the Enterprise Mobility Solutions and the Handset division.

While the first two businesses are going quite well, the Handset division isn't. Despite selling 28.1 million mobile phones in the second quarter of 2008, Moto's Handset division has reported a total loss of $346 million.

The 28.1 million phones sold in the second quarter allow Motorola to keep its third position in the handset industry. The company is currently behind Nokia (122 million devices sold in Q2 2008) and Samsung (45.7 million units sold), but ahead of LG (which shipped 27.7 million devices) and Sony Ericsson (which reported only 24.4 million phones sold).

Motorola's President and CEO, Mr. Greg Brown, stated, "Motorola's Home and Networks Mobility and Enterprise Mobility Solutions segments delivered strong results in the second quarter, driven by sales growth and operating margin expansion. These segments are well positioned to continue generating year-over-year sales and margin growth during the second half. In the Mobile Devices segment, we launched ten new products and maintained market share, compared with the first quarter, while continuing to invest in our product portfolio. We also made progress on our plans to separate Motorola into two independent, publicly traded companies, generated positive operating cash flow and reduced our cost structure."

All in all, Motorola isn't doing as bad as expected, but its Mobile Devices division really needs to re-think its strategies and report profit again, not just sales of millions of units.