If Motorola(NYSE: MOT) calls, put it right through. The wireless and semiconductor products specialist produced a healthy close to a dreadful year with its fourth-quarter report last night.

Posting pre-charge earnings of $0.13 a share on a 3% uptick in year-over-year revenues may not seem like much, but hold the phone. Motorola guided Wall Street to a top-line decline in October on earnings of merely a dime per share. This is a different company now, and the confidence may be contagious. With Nokia(NYSE: NOK) set to report tomorrow, maybe it's time to give cellular stocks a buzz.

It was a solid performance by Motorola by most measures. The company posted operating profit gains in all businesses except the sluggish wireless network equipment sector.

While it also hosed down first-quarter targets, it will still mark Motorola's third consecutive profitable quarter. It also expressed its comfort with fiscal 2003 estimates of $0.40 a share in profits on $27.5 billion in sales, despite the rocky start.

Shares peaked three years ago when the wireless sector was walking on water. It took a dip, and Motorola's stock has shed 85% of its value since then. It's fitting that the company that started out making car radios would skid out of control. It's even more poetic to see that same company get back behind the wheel and start heading in the right direction.