Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT). which continues to sit on the brink of a total meltdown in global wireless handset sales, announced a rather unique handset at the CES trade show in Las Vegas this week. Yes, if you've been clamoring to get your hands on a wireless phone made with almost entirely recycled plastic bottles, Motorola may soon have your product.

While this may make sense from an ecological perspective -- and Motorola should be commended for this -- customers won't care a bit. The Motorola W233 is the first carbon-neutral handset in the world that also comes in a smaller packaging with manuals printed on 100% recycled paper. This may be the greenest phone in the world in almost every respect.

The problem is Motorola's market -- where will it sell this? In a world where almost all customers need at least some mid-range features in their phones, the entry-level W233 may only find a home in emerging markets. If those customer segments really are seeking out green phones, that would be quite a surprise.

The W233 is definitely voice-focused, with nine hours of talktime, Motorola's CrystalTalk voice enhancement technology and messaging capabilities. Other than that, there's really nothing else feature-wise about this new handset. Motorola, should it focus this handset precisely in the customer segments where it needs to be, may still do well with this model. But, with voice minutes already a commodity, the differentiators in advanced mobile markets are data-focused -- and that is where this handset falls short.

After Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) said it was considering options to spin off or sell its money-losing wireless handset division a few weeks ago, the company's new CEO, Greg Brown, said that the company is "fully committed" to the mobile device business. Okay -- which is it? Brown went on: "Motorola is fully committed to the mobile devices business and I am fully committed to mobile devices." Fully committed to keeping it in-house or selling it off? One has to wonder.

Motorola's brand in the cellphone business is a very good one, although that division's profit troubles and sales numbers have been really horrid in the last 12 months. Still, unless the company could easily be worth more to shareholders if split up (i.e., Carl Icahn), then refocusing efforts in its handset division should be a top priority. Motorola was once on top of the world with the RAZR. There is no reason it can't be there again.

It's hard to believe that Motorola's brand recognition in the ultra-competitive handset business is tarnished. It's just the sales and profit that's lacking. So, within the fast pace that the handset business works in, Brown's test will be to fix those problems and get Motorola's nameplate again at the top of the sales charts. The market may give him all of 2008 to do so, but many investors, unfortunately, want instant gratification after former CEO Ed Zander's results.

Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT), the company that defined two-way radio communications decades ago and helped invent the cellular telephone business in the 1980s, may be looking to shed itself of its handset division. After one of the best wireless handset success stories ever with the 50 million-strong RAZR, the company has been mired in sagging sales, market share losses and monetary losses all at the same time. Even the company's former CEO didn't escape, as Ed Zander left his CEO spot less than a month ago under severe fire from the investment community.

Motorola's shares have plunged based on its horrible financial results, today standing at just over $11.30 per share, giving the company a market cap of just over $25 billion. The company's current malaise is largely due to the complete ineptness of its handset division, which for some reason fell off the wagon completely after the RAZR became the wireless handset darling of this decade. Motorola has seen suggestions of a breakup to unlock shareholder value, something longtime investor activist Carl Icahn has advocated.

Will Motorola dump its handset division and concentrate on becoming an enterprise equipment company instead of a consumer one? Analyst Richard Windsor speculated this week that the world's second-largest handset maker may indeed sell its wireless handset division. If a sale is made, the buyer will have a plethora of problems to fix; problems that, for some reason, are being evaded at Motorola's largest competitors in the space. Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK),for example, seems to be doing quite well.