Is the iPhone killing Motorola?
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Motorola has to find a way to make cool phones that people want to buy, or else face the possibility that its mobile business will be sold off.
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(InfoWorld) - When Apple launches the iPhone on Friday, it is set to get a jump on its competitors and spark a flurry of new phone designs, regardless of how well the device actually sells. By introducing a combined smartphone, mobile e-mail platform, and MP3 music player with a touchscreen interface, Apple has sent other hardware vendors running back to their drawing boards. And the company has enjoyed positive press coverage since CEO Steve Jobs announced the iPhone in January, analysts said. Apple is feeding the fire with strong advertising in its retail stores. On Monday, staffers at the Apple store in the Cambridgeside Galleria mall in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wore black T-shirts with the logo "the wait is almost over," printed above an image of a calendar page for Friday, June 29. iPhone anticipation has already created a "halo effect" of increased sales for Apple's notebook and desktop PCs, an impact that is likely to increase after the launch, according to a report from ChangeWave Research. Apple posted a strong profit for the last period despite struggling with a U.S. federal investigation into executives backdating their stock options. In April,Â Apple beat Wall Street expectations by posting a profit of $770 million for the second quarter, an 88 percent rise from that period last year. Because the company has already garnered media attention and a sales boost from iPhone demand, Apple will suffer little damage even if the device is a flop in retail sales, one analyst said. "No way Apple will seriously impact Nokia or Motorola or Samsung, who combined sell over a billion phones a year. But if Apple manages to sell several million, then that is probably pretty good for their overall business," said analyst Jack Gold, founder of the research firm J. Gold Associates. "I think the potential gold mine is in the services, not the phone hardware." The iPhone will bring new subscribers to Apple's iTunes online music store, and Apple could make more money if it decides to launch future wireless mobile products like navigation, location-based services, VoIP telephony, and video streaming, Gold said. In the meantime, Apple has already given a headache to competitors scurrying to catch up, such as Motorola, Samsung, and LG Electronics. Even vendors with comparable products -- like Nokia's N Series and High Tech Computer's HTC Touch phones -- lack Apple's cachet and will have trouble competing on store shelves, he said. In fact, some experts are warning that iPhone sales could fall short of Apple's high expectations. Their criticism includes potential user confusion about Apple's "virtual keyboard," a battery that may fade too fast and is not user-replaceable, andÂ resistance by some corporate IT departmentsÂ to the added expense and security risk of supporting mobile e-mail networks in addition to the servers they use to support Research in Motion's BlackBerry device. Those drawbacks could limit the iPhone's success in the business market, said Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research. Still, the iPhone will be popular with those who tend to use smartphones more by scrolling through menus than typing long messages and who have made Apple's iPod music player a huge hit despite similar concerns about its battery, Wu said. Likewise, consumers will likely shrug off corporate security concerns and use mobile e-mail systems from GoogleÂ and Yahoo. In the long run, Apple will use the iPhone to beat its competitors in creating an end-to-end channel for digital media, spanning from Mac PCs to the mobile iPod music player, iTunes online store, and Apple TV set-top box for sharing Internet and television video content. The only thing Apple could do to spread that net even wider would be to offer iPhone models at less than the current $499 for a 4GB version and $599 for the 8GB, Wu said.
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Motorola said yesterday it would cut 1,000 jobs, as the company continues to refocus on its core mobile phone business. It said some positions being cut were related to the Freescale Semiconductor division that Motorola is in the process of spinning off.
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A troubled Motorola Inc. has realigned itself as its critical cell-phone business slows down.
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Motorola Inc , the world's No.  3 mobile phone maker, said on Thursday it is exploring  strategic alternatives including a possible separation of its  mobile devices business from other units.
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InfoWorld - The day after&#160;announcing that 4,000 employees will be laid off, Motorola CEO Ed Zander told investors that he plans to boost profits with a wide range of multimedia handsets instead of relying on a single blockbuster product like the Razr cell phone.
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SEPTEMBER 28, 2004 (REUTERS) - Telecommunications equipment maker Motorola Inc. said today that it would cut 1,000 jobs and take related charges of about $50 million to focus on its wireless business.
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Motorola's mobile-phone business recorded a $138 million loss in the third quarter, with handset revenues declining by 36 percent to $4.5 billion in comparison with the year-earlier period. Nevertheless, Motorola executives remain upbeat about the ailing unit's prospects for returning to profitability, noting that substantial progress has been made during the quarter.
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Does this 'multimedia monster' shape up? Review After years of flogging the Razr to death, and some very uninspired siblings, Motorola finally has something interesting to offer for the more demanding end of the market. The Z8, announced in May and available in the UK this week, is a well-designed capable media phone. But the Z8 is a rare thing in this day and age: a product the manufacturer actually cares about.â¦
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Motorola Inc. will cut 1,000 jobs worldwide and take a charge of $50 million for severance benefits, officials said Tuesday. Motorola is completing a spinoff of its chip operations, now operating independently
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Motorola Inc. , the world's second-biggest mobile phone maker, said it expects to cut an additional 4,000 jobs, bringing the total to 7,500 this year, as it works to reduce costs to return to profit.
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(InfoWorld) - Two days after it restructured operations, MotorolaÂ on Thursday reported that flagging sales of mobile devices were a factor in its second-quarter loss of $28 million, or $0.01 per share. The telecommunications device maker posted income of $1.38 million, or $0.55 cents a share, one year earlier. Revenue declined by 19 percent to $8.73 billion from $10.82 billion one year earlier. The drop was expected: Motorola issuedÂ preliminary financialsÂ last week, warning that its results would be lower than had been forecast. The company said Thursday that excluding one-time costs, it would have earned $0.02 per share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial, who revised estimates lower after last week's warning, were forecasting break-even results on sales of $8.64 billion. Layoffs and other one-time charges were responsible for losses amounting to $0.04 per share. But the loss for the quarter underscores the company's beleaguered mobile device business, which has been outflanked by rivals including Apple. The pressure will continue. Motorola announced that it expects earnings in the third quarter to be equal to or slightly higher than the second quarter, and that its mobile devices unit will probably not be profitable this year. The company saw a drop in mobile device sales in Asia, a hot market where vendors are trying to get a big share of the market in fast growing economies, as North American and European markets become saturated with mobile phones. Motorola has taken steps to address its problems. The vendor announced Tuesday that it's restructuring into three business divisions: Mobile Devices, Home and Networks Mobility, and Enterprise Mobility Solutions. It also has a new chief of its mobile unit, Stu Reed. Motorola CEO Ed Zander has beenÂ under pressureÂ to resign. He attracted criticism from big-name investor Carl Icahn earlier this year, and recently has been attacked by activist shareholder Eric Jackson for the way he's running the company. Although Motorola has taken steps to cut costs, a core challenge for the company is product design in the competitive handset arena. ItsÂ Razr deviceÂ was praised for its design, but in a fast-paced market quickly became an also-ran, under a barrage of products from rivals that in addition to Apple include Nokia, Samsung Electronics, and LG Electronics. Despite expecting mobile phone sales to be under increasing pressure, Motorola did say that it expected its overall financial results to improve during the second half of the year. Thursday morning, Motorola shares were trading at $18.18, up $0.18 from its opening. Â
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RAZR phones fail to slice into new markets Motorola has announced another round of layoffs - 4,000 to add to the 3,500 jobs it slashed in January.â¦
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Less than two years past the most successful stretch in its 80-year history, Motorola Inc. is considering a sale or spinoff its now free-falling cell phone business.
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Motorola, the world's second largest mobile phone maker, is cutting 1% of its workforce but its core mobile phone operations will be unaffected.
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NEW YORK - Like a boxer shedding pounds to get to his fighting weight, Motorola is trimming down to take on the mobile phone market, shedding jobs and spinning off divisions.
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Update: The handset division is Motorola's biggest business, but has had no big wins since the Razr.