The world’s second-largest mobile phone manufacturer, Motorola, saw its share price plummet by 9 percent Wednesday after the company reported a 45 percent drop in Q3 profit and missed its sales forecast.

The sharp drop is the biggest for Motorola in almost four years.

The earnings met Wall Street’s estimates however sales of the company’s Razr phones were well down and left Moto’s revenue short of forecasts by nearly half a billion dollars.

The company said it had the slowest sales growth in five quarters after shipping fewer phones than anticipated and that sales for Q3 may not match analysts’ average estimate of $12.1 billion.

Despite the disappointing results Motorola said it had a 22.4 per cent share of the global handset market, up from 22.1 percent in Q2.

Executives at the firm said half the revenue shortfall was because of delayed customer spending on mobile network equipment in EMEA. Sales in Motorola’s networks and enterprise segment rose marginally to $2.78bn.

Motorola said it sold 53.7 million mobile phones in the quarter, up from 51.9 million in the Q2 and 38.7 million in Q3 2005. This quarter’s figures were well below Motorola’s target of 55 million.

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