A flurry of changes at Motorola’s mobile phone business. The company has reorganized its device unit to give newly promoted managers more control over the handsets their group turns out, reports Reuters. The promotions were also made to help stanch the exit of executives at the company, said Motorola (NYSE: MOT) spokeswoman Jennifer Erickson.

The Chicago Times gives a little more detail on the reorganization of the phone unit. The biggest change has been to rejig the phone categories that the handset unit had been split into, and to combine the software and hardware teams working on devices within those categories, so that they now work side by side with one another and report to the same boss. The category bosses will also have control over the five software platforms on which Motorola’s phones are currently based. As the WSJ notes, Motorola did not mention reducing the number of those platforms, which analysts have blamed for slowing down the roll out of new devices.

They’ve sensibly combined the mid/high tier feature phones and multimedia phones into a single category. Previously, feature phones were considered “fashion-centric” ones—which included the Razr, while multimedia phones were focused on photos, music, videos and gaming. The two categories, said a Moto spokesperson, are obviously blurring into one another more and more.

Along with the newly created categories, Motorola has reshuffled several executives to head them up. These include:

— Rob Shaddock, former mobile devices SVP in charge of “mass market phones”, has been appointed head of its consumer products—a category that includes all handsets other than those targeted at business users.

— John Cipolla, moves up to SVP for mid-to-high tier products, including those with multimedia and music capabilities.

— Steve Lalla, a corporate vice president, is now in charge of teams focused on mass-market phones.

— Todd DeYoung, a corporate vice president who was formerly in charge of strategy and business development for the handset group, is now responsible for ensuring the company’s cellphones “match its overarching strategy and are being directed at the right market.”

— Bruce Brda has been promoted head of worldwide sales and operations. He was formerly corporate VP of sales and operations for North America.