Motorola looking better in Q1 2010 but loses top spot in the US

Motorola's financial results are out - the mobile phone division is still in the red zone but there's a noticeable improvement over last year's. And they still have time to improve further before the planned split in two during the first quarter next year.

The Mobile Devices department posted an operating loss of 192 million US dollars, which is a marked improvement over the 545 million dollar loss for the same quarter last year.

Motorola introduced six Android-powered phones this quarter and shipped a total of 8.5 million phones, 2.3 million of which have been smartphones. The number of shipped smartphones is actually up from the previous quarter (2 million smartphones from a total of 12 million handsets shipped).

However, Motorola lost the top spot in the US as Apple shipped 8.8 million iPhones and overtook Motorola's results.

The other departments of Motorola performed better than they did the same period last year, so total earnings for the company came up to 69 million US dollars (earnings for Q4 of 2009 were 142 million dollars).

Check out the full report (PDF) for more numbers and info on the other divisions.