Moto cell phone chief promises improvements

Motorola’s new head of the handset business Stu Reed today said that Motorola will be making significant changes in its terminals business in an effort to regain lost market share, streamline production and return to profitability.

Speaking at Moto’s annual analyst conference in New York, Reed said that Motorola would cut its research and development spending by 15% quarterly and instead focus on streamlining its R&D. Moto will attempt to use more common components among its phone lines, focus on a few common platforms like Java and Linux as opposed to older disparate platforms and focus on putting profitable phones in the market rather than market share.

Motorola has seen its fortunes suffer in the last year as phone sales have plummeted along with the popularity of its hit handset, the RAZR. Reed said Motorola would be revealing several new phones in the coming 30 days. The main goal of its new launches though would be to find a line or lines of popular phones rather than focus all of its efforts on one hit device.

“We will not ride one horse to the bitter end again,” the Associated Press quoted Reed as saying at the conference.