WASHINGTON (AFP) - Motorola is counting on Google juice to power its mobile phones and its future.
"The vast majority of our devices will be launched on the Android platform," Motorola co-chief executive Sanjay Jha said on Thursday after the biggest US handset maker surprised Wall Street by reporting a small quarterly net profit.
"We are very open to other options here, and we are engaged in exploring other options, but the vast majority will be Android," Jha told financial analysts in a conference call.
Motorola released its third-quarter earnings a day after unveiling the second in a line of smartphones powered by Google's Android operating system seen as key to turning around the company's flagging fortunes.
The Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola posted a net profit of 12 million dollars, or one cent per share, in the quarter compared with a net loss of 397 million dollars in the same period a year ago.
Revenue continued to slide, however, falling 27 percent in the quarter to 5.45 billion dollars.
Revenue in the struggling Mobile Devices division declined 46 percent to 1.7 billion dollars.
Mobile Devices managed to narrow its operating loss however to 183 million dollars from 840 million dollars in the same three months last year and 253 million dollars in the previous quarter.
Motorola shipped 13.6 million handsets in the third quarter as its share of the mobile phone market fell below five percent to 4.7 percent.
Revenue for the Home and Networks Mobility segment, which includes digital entertainment devices and other products, fell 15 percent to two billion dollars. Revenue for Enterprise Mobility Solutions fell 13 percent to 1.8 billion dollars.
Motorola forecast fourth-quarter earnings of seven to nine cents per share, better than the six cents per share expected by Wall Street analysts.
The better-than-expected earnings and the optimistic outlook helped send Motorola's share price 9.80 percent higher on Wall Street on Thursday to 8.74 dollars.
Motorola's results, which were boosted in part by aggressive cost-cutting measures, came a day after the company unveiled a new smartphone with Verizon Wireless called the Droid.
The Droid, which will cost 200 dollars and is being touted as a challenger to Apple's iPhone, is powered by Android 2.0 software, Google's next-generation mobile phone operating system.
The Droid notably includes a new GPS navigation system from Google that has many of the features of a traditional standalone GPS navigation device such as 3D map views and turn-by-turn voice guidance.
Motorola released another Android-powered smartphone, the Cliq, in September.
The Cliq is heavily geared toward social networking and younger users with features built around sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
Jha, who was brought in last year to turn around the struggling mobile phone division, underlined the importance of the new smartphones in a statement.
"The introductions of our new products powered by Android are important milestones as we begin to address the mobilization of the Internet and the growing demand for modern smartphones," he said.
"Next year, we will continue to expand our smartphone portfolio and deliver improved financial results," said Jha, a former Qualcomm executive who is chief executive of Motorola's Mobile Devices division.
Motorola enjoyed success with its popular Razr phone launched in 2005 but has been losing ground since to Apple and Research in Motion, maker of the Blackberry, as well as to other major cell phone manufacturers such as Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.
Motorola also announced on Thursday that Edward Fitzpatrick, its acting chief financial officer, had been named permanent CFO.
