Troubled US vendor Motorola announced another 4,000 workforce reductions on Thursday, 3,000 of which will come from its mobile devices business.

The other 1,000 positions are associated with corporate functions and other business units.

Job cuts are expected to begin immediately and are incremental to the 3,000 reductions already announced during the fourth quarter of 2008.

Moto said the additional cutbacks will deliver an additional $700m in annual cost savings from 2009, bring the company’s total cost saving efforts up to approximately $1.5bn in 2009.

Co-CEO of Motorola, Sanjay Jha, also outlined the company’s preliminary results for the fourth quarter of 2008. During the quarter, Moto shipped approximately 19 million units, a decline of about 25 per cent on the previous quarter.

The news prompted analysts at RBC Capital Markets to comment: “Basically there was no Christmas at Motorola.in what is typically a strong fourth quarter.” RBC reckons that things are not looking up, with forecasts that global handset units may decline as much as 20 per cent quarter on quarter in the first three months of 2009.

Total sales for the fourth quarter are expected to be in the range of $7bn to $7.2bn, with the company expecting a net loss from continuing operations in the range of $0.07 to $0.08 per share. Moto will announce its fourth quarter results on February 3, but warned that the preliminary results announced today do not include any charges related to the cost-reduction actions announced this week.

RBC expects that overall revenues at Motorola may decline by 12 per cent this year as the Mobile Devices division continues to burn cash from operations.