Motorola turns slight profit ahead of Droid
updated 09:10 am EDT, Thu October 29, 2009
Motorola set to recover following Q3
Motorola landed a crucial victory today with word of a profit for its summer quarter. The company bounced back from its year-ago $397 million loss to a $12 million profit for the same season this year. Its actual cellphones shipped fell sharply from 25.4 million phones to just 13.6 million but were offset by help from cost cuts as well as boosts in sales for its networking equipment and enterprise-class hardware.
The shortfall in phones is estimated to put Motorola's market share at about 4.7 percent but isn't expected to stay as low in the near future due to the company's return to form in smartphones. During a conference call for the results, co-CEO Sanjay Jha acknowledged that sales were likely to be dipping as sales of old models ramped down but also expected sales to bounce back as the company finally releases its two promised smartphones based on Android. Yesterday, he had promised that Motorola would release at least 20 smartphones in 2010.
The American phone maker expects some help from the Cliq and its international variant, the Dext, but is placing the vast majority of its faith in the release of the Droid, whose launch is being treated as the most significant of the year by Verizon and should receive one of the largest advertising campaigns for a smartphone to date outside of Apple's iPhone.
Notably, no mention has been made of Windows Mobile devices, which used to be a staple of Motorola's lineup but now aren't expected to have a significant presence until at least the late 2010 launch of Windows Mobile 7 and possibly not until 2011.
