Wicks shares the story to make a larger point. Thanks to the pending spinoff, "We feel like we're in control of our destiny," he says. "We get to reinvent the culture and the strategy."

The 25,000-person division is under pressure to produce products that can grab market share. Wall Street isn't so sure it's up to it.

Wicks, a legendary figure in the handset-design world, says people should stop worrying. "The tough stuff" — such as design talent, resources and a big brand name — "we've got. We just have to fix some of the underlying fundamentals."

"Fundamentals" include a shift in the overall thinking of the design team, he says. Part of the shift owes to the Razr, the stylish phone that has become Motorola's (MOT) pride and pain.

The sleek, supercool Razr redefined the cellphone as a personal statement. Since its debut in late 2004, more than 100 million have been sold, making it one of the most successful wireless devices in history.

But Wicks says the runaway success of the Razr caused Motorola's design team to become "too myopic."

"Too much decision-making got focused on style," he says.

Motorola missed the move to smartphones, leaving it without an answer to the Apple iPhone and other Web-enabled devices that are now the rage.

Wicks says the design team learned a lesson. The result today, Wicks says, is a catalog of feature-rich devices that offer advanced music capabilities, full-motion video, speedy Web browsing and a lot more.

The Rokr E8, due to hit stores this quarter, has features consumers expect, such as a touch-screen. But it also has something else: morphing power.

With the touch of a button, the face of the E8 morphs into a phone, music player or video device. Each iteration is easy to navigate. Even the keyboard, as well as the raised keys, change dramatically. As a recent demonstration showed, the morphing process is seamless, instantaneous and, well, fun.

The E8 is just the beginning. Wicks says his team is on track to turn out 50 to 70 products this year, with a similar number in the pipeline for 2009. Work on the 2010 portfolio has already begun.

"We see all that at our level," Wicks says, referring to the crush of devices in development. "People on the outside, they don't see that."

Jeremy Dale, vice president of global marketing for the division, says there's an important message to Wall Street and other Motorola-watchers in all this: "Buy the stock now," he says, "because we think we're going to be a great comeback story."

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