Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Motorola Inc. slumped in New York trading after forecasting profit that missed analysts' estimates, pushing the mobile-phone maker to cut 3,000 jobs and delay plans to break itself up.

Profit this quarter will be 2 cents to 4 cents a share, excluding costs for job cuts, Motorola said today in a statement. Analyst on average predicted 7 cents. Motorola, which succumbed this year to demands by billionaire Carl Icahn to split off its money-losing mobile-phone unit, said it won't meet a goal of completing the breakup by the third quarter of 2009.

Co-Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Jha, hired in August to revive the phone unit, will focus on handsets with Google Inc. software to win back sales lost to Samsung Electronics Co. and Nokia Oyj. Phone shipments fell 32 percent to 25.4 million units, the seventh straight drop, demoting Motorola to fourth in worldwide sales.

``It's a risky strategy,'' said Tavis McCourt, an analyst at Morgan Keegan & Co. in Nashville. ``2009's going to see more market-share losses than I thought.'' He projects the stock will perform in line with its peers and doesn't own it.

The job cuts, scheduled for the next few quarters, account for about 5 percent of the total and are on top of more than 9,000 since the start of 2007. They are part of a plan to save $800 million next year, and more than two-thirds of them will happen in the phone unit, Co-CEO Greg Brown said in an interview.

Motorola, based in Schaumburg, Illinois, fell 29 cents, or 5.3 percent, to $5.17 at 4 p.m. on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock has lost 68 percent this year.

Shrinking Market Share

The third-quarter net loss was $397 million, or 18 cents a share, compared with a profit of $60 million, or 3 cents, a year earlier. Sales fell 15 percent to $7.48 billion, missing the $7.82 billion average analyst estimate. Earnings, excluding costs from job cuts, were 5 cents a share. That exceeded the 2 cents analysts projected.

Jha, 45, is tasked with reviving a business that hasn't had a hit since the all-metal Razr flip phone, introduced in 2004. Once the industry leader, Motorola last quarter lost its No. 3 ranking to Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Ltd., the mobile- phone venture of Sony Corp. and Ericsson AB.

``We just need to become much better at delivering products fast,'' Jha said in an interview. The company needs to build more than one successful handset, he said.

Android Focus

Motorola's share of global sales fell to 8.4 percent last quarter from 12.9 percent a year earlier, Boston-based researcher Strategy Analytics said today. Sony Ericsson, based in London, had 8.5 percent of the market. Samsung, based in Suwon, South Korea, boosted its share to 17.1 percent and Espoo, Finland-based Nokia kept its share at 38.9 percent.

Jha, who spent 14 years at San Diego-based Qualcomm, plans to sell more expensive devices with full keyboards and touch screens to boost profit. Motorola, whose older W755 phone sells for $19.99, this month unveiled the $149.99 Krave, which has a clear flip cover and a full touch screen inside. The Krave is Motorola's first touch-screen model in the U.S., challenging Apple Inc.'s iPhone.

Motorola has been too focused on ``bright, shiny objects,'' Jha said on a conference call today. He will cut the number of operating systems Motorola uses to three and release a phone powered by Google's Android software in time for the 2009 holiday season. Android is a royalty-free program that lets phones run computer-like functions like Web searches and e-mail.

Handset Losses

``They haven't been very successful in bringing their software platforms to market,'' said James Faucette, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Oregon. ``If they are able to execute, they definitely position themselves to recover in 2010.'' Faucette predicts the stock will perform in line with its peers and doesn't own it.

Revenue from mobile phones fell 31 percent to $3.12 billion last quarter, and the unit was the company's only money-losing business with a loss of $840 million. That widened from $248 million a year earlier.

Motorola said in March it plans to separate the unit to focus on profitable TV set-top boxes, two-way radios and wireless-networking gear. It today cited the financial crisis and slowing economy for the delay.

``We would have had to start expending reasonable amounts of cash over the next several months to prepare for something in 2009,'' Brown said. ``We just didn't think that was an appropriate use of cash.''

Icahn is ``familiar'' with the delay and has representatives on the board, which supported pushing back the split, Jha said. Icahn didn't respond to a request for comment.

Profit at the network and set-top box unit rose 65 percent to $263 million, as sales fell 1 percent to $2.4 billion. The two-way-radio unit's profit increased 23 percent to $403 million, as sales gained 4 percent to $2 billion.

Two weeks ago, Gartner cut its global handset unit sales forecast to 8 percent because consumers are curbing spending. In July, the Stamford, Connecticut-based researcher projected growth of as much as 11 percent.

To contact the reporters on this story: Amy Thomson in New York at athomson6@bloomberg.net; Vivek Shankar in San Francisco at vshankar3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 30, 2008 16:37 EDT