The headline says it all: analysts, investors and the company themselves were expecting Motorola’s Q1 2008 financial performance to be bad, but the US firm managed to miss even the dreariest of sales predictions.  Year-on-year sales fell by 39-percent, with the reported $7.45bn in Q1 sales a whole 21-percent less than Q1 2007.  That’s all because of appalling shipping figures: 40-percent fewer handsets sold comparing the most recent quarter to its counterpart last year, just 27.4m (versus 45.4m), and mobile revenue down 39-percent year-on-year to $3.3bn.

Analysts had cautiously predicted sales of $7.75bn and a 7 cents per share loss; obviously Motorola couldn’t quite scrape together even that much, but share losses – when you discount costs as a result of job losses – are only totalling 5 cents each.  Overall loss is $194m (9 cents a share), compared to $181m in Q1 2007.

Things don’t look too great for Q2, either.  Motorola is predicting between 2 and 4 cents loss per share (where the financial analysts hoped for a single cent loss), and CEO Greg Brown reported that they’re struggling with the logistics of splitting the company.  Estimated to take place in 2009, it means the rest of Motorola’s businesses - which are actually performing well – remains shackled to the lame handset arm.

Not much to inspire from their focus for the rest of the year, either.  New 3G handsets, improved messaging (is it just me who finds it ironic that the popular Sidekick Slide is made by Motorola but the company themselves lacks a decent messaging handset?) and touchscreen devices are all on the agenda.  They’ll also attempt to weather the slowdown in Western handset sales by developing more models for emerging markets.