Motorola (NYSE: MOT) chief Ed Zander is on the hot seat, big time. Although Carl Icahn failed months ago to secure a seat on the Motorola board (where he would have pushed Zander out if possible), there are activist shareholders amassing at the cellphone maker's border ready to torch the place and install new management. Why? Well, Motorola's recent results just posted today added more doom to the gloom for Zander and Co. His days are now officially numbered.

Why in the world is Motorola not profitable and not expecting to get there until 2008? It is still the world's second-largest wireless handset maker, but for some reason it has not figured out in recent quarters how to turn a profit, while making upwards of $9 billion per quarter. If Zander was brought in years ago for his operational expertise (generally this involves cost cutting and margin expertise), then the exact opposite results being seen now at the company he leads are just nudging him closer and closer to the front door. As in, bye-bye, boss.

Motorola blamed weak sales for the second quarter on lackluster results in Asia and Europe. Well, its business is not that stellar in the U.S. either, so where is the company doing well? Nowhere -- and without a road map of some new killer cellphone product, Motorola may be going absolutely nowhere. Even if the RAZR 2 launch is very successful, I'm not sure it can repeat the blowout success of the original RAZR handset, which padded Motorola's bottom line for over two years. That day has now ended, and Zander's inability to line up successors and revenue producers in the last 24 months will lead to his end at Motorola this year as well. Chalk it up.