In a candid interview with the Financial Times (FT) published today, Motorola CEO Greg Brown said the majority of problems being suffered by the vendor “are our own doing” but the head man remains confident its troubled mobile device division can begin to show improvement in the second quarter. “It would be our goal to… narrow the operating losses going forward,” he told the publication. “If Q1 is awfully close to the bottom, I would then be expecting Q2 to be… an improvement. That is our goal.” Last month Motorola’s handset division announced it had suffered a fourth-quarter operating loss of US$595 million after sales declined 51 percent to US$2.35 billion. According to the FT, Brown insisted that Motorola has established a path back to profitability for the unit, which recorded a US$2.2 billion operating loss for full-year 2008. He rejected the case for shutting the unit or combining it with a rival.

Once the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer, Motorola has slipped down the rankings following an unprofitable strategy to increase market share in developing countries in 2006 and a failure to produce a device to match the popularity of its RAZR handset. Brown told the FT that Motorola “didn’t see the trends coming in smartphone and 3G with the kind of foresight and customer attention it should have.” He went on to describe the company’s failure to anticipate the growing importance of mobile software rather than handset design and highlighted the company’s failed attempt to develop a single operating system for its handsets based on Linux and Java software. Last month the company revealed details on how it intends to turn-around its ailing handset division, announcing plans to put great emphasis on smartphone development and commitment to Google’s Android operating system. It will concentrate on mid- to higher-priced mobiles, with sales efforts focused on the US, Latin America and China. Meanwhile, the company will seek to reduce operating expenses at the mobile unit by US$1.2 billion this year and still intends to eventually spin off the unit.