Motorola profit up on strong smart phone sales
Motorola Inc. posted a profit in the first quarter, with smartphone sales helping the flagship mobile devices business turn around a heavy loss from a year earlier.
The Schaumburg-based technology company reported a net profit of $69 million, or 3 cents per share, reversing a loss of $231 million, or 10 cents per share, in the first quarter of 2009. Overall sales for the company fell to $5 billion from $5.4 billion a year ago.
Motorola’s mobile devices division posted sales of $1.6 billion, a decline of 9 percent from the same quarter last year. But the unit’s operating loss came to $192 million, substantially narrower than a loss of $545 million in 2009. Co-Chief Executive Sanjay Jha told analysts on a conference call that he expects the business to become profitable in the fourth quarter of this year.
Source: Chicago breaking business
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Motorola Droid gets official multitouch support — in Google Maps
Not even a week after announcing the big multitouch update for its own Nexus One, Google has turned loose a new version of Google Maps that enables pinch-to-zoom support on the Droid. Of course, it was no secret that Android 2.0 had the framework in place to support this kind of stuff — Moto enabled it all by its lonesome on the Euro-spec Milestone — but it looks like this could be the watershed moment where multitouch finally becomes a must-have feature on Android devices across the board, as Moto CEO Sanjay Jha recently suggested would happen.
Source: Engadget.
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Motorola Posts 4Q Profit but Outlook Is Low
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Motorola Inc. showed progress in its turnaround efforts Thursday but a disappointing profit forecast sent its shares sliding.
Motorola stock fell 73 cents, or 9.9 percent, to $6.67 in morning trading.
The shares are still more than double what they were trading for in March, as optimism has grown that Motorola can salvage its cell phone business. The first fruits of its new approach, the Cliq and Droid smart phones, went on sale in the fourth quarter.
Those phones were well received, and Motorola reporting shipping 2 million units. But overall cell phone sales were lower than expected, at 12 million units. Total revenue came to $5.7 billion, missing the average forecast from analysts of $5.9 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.
However, analysts did not appear to have taken into account that Motorola deferred $200 million in revenue from sales of smart phones, amortizing it instead over two years, in a new accounting step.
Looking ahead, Motorola said it expects a loss in the first quarter of 1 cent to 3 cents per share, excluding unusual items. Analysts expected a profit of 3 cents.
Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha said the loss would come from the planned launch of several new smart phones, with the attendant sales, marketing and support costs. At the same time, he expects smart phone sales to be down from the fourth quarter, when Verizon Wireless put a massive push behind the Droid.
Read the full story on ABC News.
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