Motorola's mobile department posts its first profit in three years

Cell phone manufacturers are recovering it seems - first Sony Ericsson, now Motorola. Moto"s mobile phone department has been struggling as of late, to the point where it"s on its way to be splintered off.

But this Q3, Motorola Mobility, which makes the phones, has posted its first profit in a while (in three years, to be exact). Moto shipped 9.1 million handsets, 3.8 million of which were smartphones.

There were a total of 22 new smartphones introduced in 2010. The Droid X, Droid 2 and Droid Pro are enjoying a lot of popularity in the States as is the MING series in China.

But let"s talk cash - mobile devices accounted for 2 billion US dollars of sales (a sizable chunk of the 4.7 billion USD for the company as a whole). Just over 900 million of that came from the US market - a 5% increase compared to last year"s third quarter.

So, how much actual profit does this account to? 3 million US dollars of non-GAAP earnings - a very, very thin profit margin indeed, but it"s profit nonetheless. When you do the math following the GAAP guidelines however, the results go red - 43 million in losses.

Still, compared to the 183 million dollars loss (non-GAAP) in Q3 2009, it"s a huge improvement. The net earning for Motorola as a whole reached 109 million dollars - almost 10 times the 12 million USD result for Q3 of 2009.

This bit of good news in the mobile world comes just a day after LG posted some troublesome figures , with their mobile department posting a big loss.

One last interesting tidbit - Motorola"s Networks business will be sold off to the Nokia Siemens Networks. For more info on the whole company and more detailed numbers, check out the press release.