Motorola earnings: A relief rally

You could leave this page blank. There is not much to say about Motorola's (NYSE: MOT) earnings that was not pre-announced. The company beat consensus forecast by 2 cents, but the rest of the news was dismal.

The company reported sales of $8.7 billion for the second quarter of 2007. The GAAP net loss from continuing operations for the second quarter of 2007 was $0.02 per share, revenue fell from $10.8 billion in the quarter last year to $8.7 billion this year.

Revenue in the company's handset unit was down 40% to $4.3 billion. The company made a big deal over the 42% revenue increase at its enterprise mobility unit that does government and big corporate work. But the numbers would have been closer to flat if MOT had not bought Symbol Technologies in January. Very convenient.

Motorola's guidance and outlook was that things were not getting better soon. The stock may rise a bit today because they were not worse.

At this point shareholders would be better off if the company sold its handset business to Samsung and kept it set-top box and enterprise telecom businesses. At least the company could probably stop having to lay people off every quarter.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.