Update: Motorola has now told techradar that the comments from Lenovo's SVP Chen Zudong only related to the Chinese market and don't extend to all Motorola products. The statement said Motorola will "share more information about 2016 products at a later time."
Motorola has also confirmed the Moto G and Moto E aren't dead after all - in fact, we may see updates to both phone ranges later in 2016.
Big blowers
Xudong also revealed that all Moto-branded phones in 2016 will have screens of at least 5 inches, which isn't terribly surprising given that even the budget Moto G has a 5-inch display.
However, there may not be a new Moto E, as the company will be reserving the Moto name for higher-end devices and using the Lenovo Vibe brand for lower-end ones.
In all there are set to be no more than 15 phones released by the company this year, split between the two brand names. That still sounds like quite a healthy number and we'd always go for quality over quantity.
More troublingly the UI on this year's Moto range will apparently be changing, with the company planning to merge the Vibe UI with the almost stock Android one found on recent Motorola handsets. What exactly that will mean remains to be seen, but moving further away from pure Android is unlikely to be a positive thing. Still, at least we get fingerprint scanners.