Is Motorola preparing to lay off roughly half of its handset unit?

According to a single-sourced report on PhoneScoop, yes. The single-paragraph report goes on to say that Motorola is preparing to trim the number of new phones it brings to market down to just a dozen per year, and eliminate the Windows Mobile platform in favor of Google's Android platform.

A Motorola representative said that the company doesn't comment on rumors.

So far, no one's quite sure if this report is true or not. But the report sounds viable, always a solid foundation for a juicy rumor.

"Even if the actual details prove to be somewhat off, the credibility attached to the leak throughout the markets indicates how serious everyone knows Motorola's situation to be - and that radical action on the scale indicated is required if the company is to prove bearish analysts, predicting that it will crash out of the cellphone market this year, wrong," Rethink Wireless' Caroline Gabriel wrote.