Motorola shareholders fume over falling phone sales

Incensed shareholders used Motorola's annual meeting yesterday to blast the company's board and management with complaints, with some questioning whether it should proceed with splitting off consumer products as a separate division.

"You're not doing the job that you're paid for. Either put up or get out," growled one disgruntled Motorola shareholder, venting his wrath over Motorola's financial losses and sliding stock prices.

Perennially contentious majority shareholder Carl Icahn -- who recently gained two seats on the board after almost winning a proxy fight last year -- refrained from attending this year's meeting in Chicago.

But although the results of its efforts have yet to be seen on the company's bottom line, Motorola has been taking steps lately toward a reorganization, pushed by iCahn, that will cleave the company in two.

In mid-April, Motorola named David Dorman, previously the architect of a similar restructuring at AT&T, as interim chairman of its own board of directors. About a week later, CEO Greg Brown issued a memo to employees outlining intentions to combine hardware pros with software specialists in product teams within a new mobile phone division.

Still, with the next generation of Motorola phones not expected to materialize until the end of 2008, some shareholders and analysts doubt whether Motorola can produce a successor to its successful RAZR in time to stop rivals from gobbling more market share.

In one recent report, Ed Snyder, an analyst at Charter Equity Reserch, predicted that Motorola will ultimately exit the mobile phone business, following along the same pathway that Ericsson and Siemens settled upon several years ago.