Falling phone sales hit Motorola Q4 results
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Motorola&#39;s mobile-phone business continued to lose its signal in the fourth quarter, dragging the company&#39;s revenue and profit down.The Schaumburg, Illinois, company has had trouble coming up with a phone to match the success of its original Razr, which is now several years old and does little for the company&#39;s bottom line. Motorola&#39;s Mobile Devices unit had sales of $4.8 billion in the fourth quarter, down from $7.8 billion a year earlier, and the division lost $388 million compared with profit of $341 million in last year&#39;s fourth quarter.Stronger results with enterprise and home-network products eased Motorola&#39;s pain, but the company still reported a steep fall in profit for the quarter and a loss for the full year 2007. In the fourth quarter, Motorola had net income of $100 million and earnings per share of $0.04, down from $529 million or $0.25 a year earlier. The company lost $49 million or $0.02 per share for the year. Companywide, revenue in the quarter fell to $9.6 billion from $11.8 billion a year earlier.The outlook for the current quarter is no better. Along with Wednesday&#39;s earnings report, Motorola forecast a loss of between $0.05 per share and $0.07 per share, excluding charges associated with its cost-reduction initiatives and other items.&quot;The recovery in Mobile Devices will take longer than expected and there is a lot more work to be done,&quot; CEO Greg Brown said in a prepared statement. The company&#39;s &quot;primary focus&quot; is to improve profits and enhance its mobile products, he added. Motorola is also focused on reducing costs and took several steps to make the Mobile Devices business more efficient, he said.Once locked in a struggle with Nokia for cell-phone sales leadership,&#160;Motorola had fallen to third place&#160;behind Samsung by last year&#39;s third quarter. Last May, when it introduced the Razr&#39;s successor, called the Razr2, the company said it hoped the new device would cut losses. But tough times have continued in the face of Apple&#39;s iPhone and other high-profile competitors, and in late November,&#160;CEO Ed Zander was replaced by Brown.Fourth-quarter sales were up in both the Home and Networks Mobility group, which makes set-top boxes and wireless infrastructure, and in Enterprise Mobility, which benefitted from Motorola&#39;s acquisition of Symbol Technologies early last year. The home business saw sales rise 11 percent to $2.7 billion, though its profit fell to $192 million. Profit in the home business soared to $451 million from $323 million in the fourth quarter of 2006, while sales were up 35 percent to $2.1 billion.In midday trading Wednesday, Motorola&#39;s shares on the New York Stock Exchange were down $2.32 to $10.00 amid a generally weak day on Wall Street.
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Motorola Inc  said on Wednesday  it will post an operating loss in the current quarter as its  cell phone business is taking longer than expected to turn  around, dashing Wall Street hopes for a profit and sending its  shares down 20 percent.
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Nokia, the world&#39;s biggest cell phone maker, reported lower third-quarter earnings on Thursday after cutting prices to claw back market share, but said sales were strong as it enters the key Christmas season.
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Motorola executives said demand for the companyâs cellphones had slowed and the company was losing market share.
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Analysts predict growth in mobile phone sales will drop below 10 percent this year.
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Nokia OYJ reported a 20 percent drop in third-quarter profits on Thursday, citing disappointing mobile phone sales that will likely put a damper on fourth-quarter results as well.
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Nokia reported a 44 percent rise in net profit for the fourth quarter, on sales that increased 34 percent. The company estimates 1.14 billion phones were sold in 2007, 40 percent of them bearing the Nokia brand.The company made net profit for the quarter of &#8364;1.84 billion ($2.7 billion as of Dec. 31, last day of the period reported), up from &#8364;1.27 billion a year earlier.Sales for the quarter rose to &#8364;15.7 billion from &#8364;11.7 billion a year earlier. Growth was dampened by the weakening dollar: at constant currency rates, sales would have grown by 40 percent, the company said.Nokia is counting on its&#160;acquisition of digital mapping data provider Navteq, and its move into the Internet services business, to drive future growth, Chief Financial Officer Rick Simonson said in a conference call with analysts.Basic mobile phones sales now account for less than half the group&#39;s revenue, down from 60 percent a year earlier. Although sales volumes increased, the average selling price of such phones dipped from &#8364;89 to &#8364;83.Around the world, shipments in the quarter increased 26.5 percent, with growth topping 40 percent in Asia. Growth could have been faster were it not for shortages of certain components, Nokia said. Sales fell in North America, Nokia&#39;s smallest geographic market, where shipments dropped 13.6 percent to 5.1 million phones. Nokia blamed the drop on its progressive withdrawal from the market for phones based on CDMA technology, used mainly in North America, to focus on the GSM technology used worldwide.Nokia&#39;s multimedia division saw a 42 percent increase in sales, to &#8364;3.03 billion, and a doubling of operating profit, driven by the success of consumer smartphones such as the N73 and N95, which the company describes as &quot;multimedia computers.&quot; It shipped over 11 million Nseries devices and over 2 million of its Eseries enterprise devices during the quarter.New phones and multimedia devices that began shipping in volume during the quarter accounted for about 30 percent of profits and revenue, said CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.The company also saw sales more than double at Nokia Siemens Networks, its network equipment joint venture with German conglomerate Siemens.Looking ahead, the company expects mobile phone sales to dip slightly in the first quarter, picking up to grow 10 percent for the full year. It also expects its share of that market to grow, although average selling prices will likely continue to decline, it said.&quot;Much work remains in order to realize our ambitions,&quot; Kallasvuo said. &quot;We will not underestimate the competition.&quot;Nokia will have to address its problems in North America if it wants to increase its share of the mobile phone market further, said Gartner research vice president Carolina Milanesi.The company is working with U.S. operator&#160;Sprint Nextel to build a nationwide WiMax network, but Milanesi does not expect sales of WiMax devices to compensate for the company&#39;s falling CDMA market share during 2008.&quot;It&#39;s not going to happen overnight,&quot; Milanesi said.Simonson found a silver lining to the cloud over Nokia&#39;s performance in North America: with such a small share of the U.S. market, the company has little exposure to the country&#39;s economic troubles.
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The phone company reported a fourth-quarter loss of $11.1 million as it scaled back on marketing and cut other costs.
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Motorola will cut an additional 4,000 jobs as the mobile phone maker tries to cope with tough global competition.
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Motorola Inc., the No. 2 mobile phone  maker, said on Wednesday it expects sales of phones based on  the WCDMA third-generation technology to more than quadruple  next year, helping it claw back market share.
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Motorola Inc. MOT.N, the world's No.  2 maker of cell phones, on Tuesday said its quarterly profit  more than tripled, but growth in handset volumes disappointed  Wall Street and its shares fell 4.5 percent.
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Cell phone maker Motorola Inc. on Wednesday said net profits fell 84 percent in the fourth quarter and warned that the recovery in its struggling handset unit will take longer than expected.
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Weak home and hardware sales drive lower fourth-quarter profits.
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Motorola Inc., the No. 2 mobile phone maker, said on Wednesday it expects sales of phones based on the WCDMA third-generation technology to more than quadruple next year, helping it claw back market share.
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Shares of the worldâs biggest maker of mobile networks fell 24% after announcing a drop in third-quarter profit amid weaker demand for equipment in Europe and the U.S.
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Motorola Inc.  posted its  second straight quarterly loss on Thursday as a lack of  advanced mobile phones cost the company market share and  dropped it into third place in the industry behind Nokia  (NOK1V.HE) and Samsung Electronics (005930.KS).
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(InfoWorld) - A troubled Motorola has realigned itself as its criticalÂ cell-phone business slows down. The company sketched out the reorganization in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday, two days before it is set to announce its second-quarter financial results. Last week, Motorola slashed its earlier revenue forecast for the quarter and predicted a larger loss, blaming lower phone sales. It also named a new chief of its mobile unit, Stu Reed. Other recent changes in the executive ranks have also rocked the company. Motorola is now split into three divisions: Mobile Devices, Home and Networks Mobility, and Enterprise Mobility Solutions. The company is moving its Good Technology mobile e-mail software business from the Mobile Devices division into Enterprise Mobility Solutions. Its carrier equipment business has been combined with home broadband products in the Home and Networks Mobility segment with the new enterprise unit focusing on private network products. The Home and Networks Mobility group is responsible for set-top boxes and digital video systems for carriers, home DSL and cable modems, and wired and wireless broadband network gear. The Enterprise group encompasses analog and digital two-way radio and other voice and data communications systems for government, businesses and Motorola's large public safety customer base. Good Technology, whichÂ Motorola acquiredÂ in a deal completed in February, is a mobile messaging platform with enterprise features like centralized lockdown of unwanted applications on the phone. It competes against Research in Motion's BlackBerry system and Nokia's Intellisync technology. After the rousing success of the slim Razr handset, which started out as a premium-priced bauble and quickly became a mass-market commodity, Motorola has had trouble coming out with an encore. A Razr 2 is expected later this year. New handsets from Nokia, Samsung, and LG Electronics had stolen the spotlight even before Apple's iPhone, which debuted June 29, became the talk of the industry. Meanwhile, sales for all makers have stagnated in higher-priced markets like North America and Europe while rising in lower-priced India and China, according to industry analysts. Last Wednesday, Motorola said it expected to report 35 million to 36 million handset sales in the second quarter, down from 45.5 million in the previous quarter. Its revenue forecast dropped from $9.4 billion to between $8.6 billion and $8.7 billion. The company now expects to lose between $0.02 and $0.04 in the quarter.