Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Motorola Inc., the second-biggest U.S. seller of mobile phones, is cutting 4,000 more jobs as consumers stave off purchases amid the economic recession.

About three-fourths of the cuts will come from its mobile devices unit, Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola said today in a statement. The reduction follows 3,000 cuts disclosed in October as the declining phone business leached profitability.

Motorola has now reduced its workforce by about 16,000 since the start of 2007 and joins AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp. in slashing jobs. Motorola shipped about half as many phones in the fourth quarter as a year earlier. The slumping economy led analysts at Citigroup Inc. to predict global mobile-phone sales will fall 13 percent this year, the first drop since 2001.

“It’s a symptom of the market and Motorola’s position in handsets,” said Mark McKechnie, an analyst at Broadpoint AmTech Inc. in San Francisco, who has a “neutral” rating on the shares. “They are trying to figure out what size the company should be. It’s good to see that they are saving money.”

Motorola fell 5 cents to $4.06 in extended trading after dropping 21 cents to $4.11 at 4 p.m. on the New York Stock Exchange. The shares slid 72 percent last year.

Combined with the job reductions announced in the fourth quarter, savings will total about $1.5 billion this year, Motorola said. Today’s actions account for $700 million.

Fourth-Quarter

Co-Chief Executive Officers Greg Brown and Sanjay Jha have frozen U.S. pension plans and cut executive pay to lower costs. Jha has said he’ll use Google Inc.’s Android software to create more advanced devices to challenge Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., which took the market lead in the third quarter.

Revenue in the fourth period fell to between $7 billion and $7.2 billion in the period, Motorola said in the statement, missing the average $7.47 billion estimate of 22 analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Sales of $7 billion would represent a 27 percent drop from a year earlier.

The company had a net loss of 7 cents to 8 cents, excluding some items. Analysts had estimated a loss of 1 cent. Full results will be reported on Feb. 3, Motorola said.

Motorola shipped about 19 million handsets in the fourth quarter, less than half the amount of the year-earlier period.

Android Phone

The company introduced its first touch-screen device, the Krave, in October to compete with Apple’s iPhone. Later that month, Jha said the company had been too focused on “bright, shiny objects.” Motorola would trim the number of operating systems to three and release an Android-based phone in time for the 2009 holidays, he said.

Motorola lost its top ranking in the U.S. mobile-phone market in the third quarter as its share of sales slid to 21.1 percent from 32.7 percent a year earlier, according to researcher Strategy Analytics in Newton, Massachusetts. Sales at Samsung, based in Suwon, South Korea, rose to 22.4 percent of the market from 17.9 percent.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lisa Wolfson in San Francisco at lwolfson@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: January 14, 2009 18:40 EST