New York - Ailing US mobile phone maker Motorola Inc announced plans to cut another 4,000 jobs, or 6 per cent of its workforce, after posting quarterly losses, the company said Wednesday.

The job cuts were to be effective immediately, the Schaumburg, Illinois-based company announced after stock markets closed on Wednesday.

Motorola already announced to reduce its workforce by 3,000 in the last quarter. Both measures are to engender savings of 1.5 billion dollars, the company said.

The company failed to develop an equally successful successor to its popular RAZR handset, causing sales and market shares to drop over the past years. The situation was exacerbated by the recent market downturn.

Plans to establish Motorola's handset division as an individual company were mothballed due to the global financial crisis.

Motorola only provided limited information on its results for the fourth quarter, detailed results are to be released on February 3.

Net losses were around 7 to 8 cents per share, but warned the loss could be even bigger. Sales were between 7 and 7.2 billion dollars. The company sold 19 million handsets in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared to about 40 million handsets in the same quarter the previous year. (dpa)