Motorola (MOT) continues to spin its wheels. The wireless giant said its fourth-quarter profit from continuing operations fell to $111 million, or a nickel a share, from the year-ago $523 million, or 21 cents a share. Excluding restructuring charges, the company made 14 cents a share, a penny better than the Wall Street analyst consensus estimate. Motorola cited strong results at its networking businesses, the mellifluously named Home & Networks Mobility and Enterprise Mobility Solutions units, but said its handset division “remains challenged.” The handset business swung to a $388 million operating loss from a year-ago profit of $341 million, as sales plunged 38 percent year-over-year. 

Indeed, the handset business is so challenged that Motorola - which has been losing market share to industry leader Nokia (NOK) and others - expects to lose money for the first quarter. The company forecast an operating loss of 5 to 7 cents a share for the quarter, where analysts were looking for a profit of a dime a share. That projection sent the stock - already trading within a dollar of its 52-week low - tumbling 11 percent in early action to just over $11 a share.

“We are focused on aggressively rationalizing the company’s cost structure and working to get Mobile Devices back on track,” said CEO Greg Brown, who was tapped late last year to step in for the departing Ed Zander. “The recovery in Mobile Devices will take longer than expected and there is a lot more work to be done.” Given the poor results at Motorola’s handset business and the sharp decline of the company’s stock, Brown may soon be hearing from restive shareholder Carl Icahn.

Now this from Fortune’s Stephanie Mehta:

Don’t cry for Padmasree Warrior. Motorola’s (MOT) former chief technology officer already has a new gig: Cisco (CSCO) today announced she’s becoming its CTO. 
 
Warrior, 47, is a skilled speaker and presenter (and, some would argue, a tireless self-promoter). That makes her a great fit for Cisco, where marketing savvy is a valued trait.
 
And indeed, Cisco CEO John Chambers in a news release said Warrior “will help to develop and promote Cisco’s future technology leadership.”
 
We caught up with Warrior for a few moments today. She was mum on when she and Chambers started talking about her move to Cisco, citing confidentiality, except to say she resigned from Motorola Friday afternoon. (Motorola disclosed her departure Monday.)
 
She said she was drawn to Cisco because, as she says, the company is “at the heart of the second phase of the Internet revolution” and its new wave of networks built around collaboration. It probably doesn’t hurt that Cisco seems to be on solid footing these days, with strong growth prospects and a market capitalization hovering around $164 billion (See Rik Kirkland’s “Cisco’s display of strength“). Warrior’s old employer, meanwhile, isn’t doing quite so well. Her former boss Ed Zander just resigned as CEO, and Motorola’s market value is a tepid $36 billion.

The shakeup continues at Motorola (MOT). Last week the struggling tech company bid adieu to CEO Ed Zander after a long run of missteps in the fast-growing handset business. This week, Fortune’s Stephanie Mehta points out, the company is saying goodbye to its technology chief, Padmasree Warrior. Not just that, though. Motorola also has zapped her Bits at the Edge blog and replaced it with a generic Motorola page. That’s probably for the best, though, considering the content of recent posts. “As we enter The World of 2.0,” Warrior wrote back on Nov. 26, “leadership must evolve to a new order.” And so it has, regardless of her thoughts on the matter.

Update: Readers note that Warrior sold a Motorola share or two ahead of the recent changes, raking in $181,000 in a stock sale last month and $1.5 million in an option-related sale back in August, according to Yahoo! Finance. On the other hand, everyone else has been selling the stock too, so you can understand where she’s coming from.

Nokia (NOK) delivered a mixed message at Tuesday’s investor day. The big Finnish handset maker said it expects worldwide mobile-device industry sales to continue their sustained rise, jumping 10%  next year to 1.2 billion units. Nokia also expects to boost its operating profit margin by a point or two over coming years, to around 16%-17%, as the company trims overhead and keeps a lid on research and development spending. Nokia says it will expand its share of the global handset market, currently around 40%, and set a deal with Universal Music for music downloads over Nokia phones.

Read those comments and you’d assume Nokia shares would stay on the winning streak that has taken them up 71% this year. But for all of Nokia’s gains, investors are focusing on one other forecast from today’s event: Nokia sees the average price of cellphones falling. That trend figures to hurt both Nokia and rival Motorola (MOT), which last week replaced CEO Ed Zander in hopes of getting a handle on the cellphone business. Shares in Nokia and Motorola both fell early Tuesday, signaling that even Nokia is fallible — and that incoming Motorola chief Greg Brown shouldn’t expect much of a honeymoon.