Motorola loses a cool $397M in Q3, delays handset division spinoff
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Oct 30th 2008 11:27AM
posted Oct 30th 2008 11:27AM
Now that the books have been cooked to a delicious golden brown, Motorola has revealed its third quarter earnings today -- and for consumers and shareholders alike, the news isn't particularly awesome. First off, they've lost $397 million in the quarter, compared with $40 million in net earnings (black ink, not red) in the same quarter a year ago. Secondly, while they've announced today that they plan to develop a full range of Android-powered handsets in 2009, they're not coming quickly; they're expected in the second half of the year at the earliest, and when you factor in the inevitable delays, that could realistically mean 2010 for some of the models. What's more, they've announced a belt-tightening plan to cut $800 million in 2009 expenditures, which will inevitably lead to some morale problems out in Schaumburg (for those who are still employed). Finally -- and we're not sure if this is ultimately good or bad news -- co-CEO Sanjay Jha has decided to hold off on selling the handset division until some time after the third quarter of 2009 due to the "macro-economic environment," which we think is code for "we couldn't give it away right now." Keep fightin', Moto.Update: How's Moto going to save close to a billion dollars in 2009, you ask? Greg Brown, the other half of Motorola's Ambiguously Executive Duo, mentioned that it'll be trimming 3,000 jobs from the company -- 2,000 of which will be coming from the handset division. We imagine it's pretty hard for company staffers to innovate when there's a constant fear of the chopping block looming overhead.
They haven't developed a decent phone in years and became complacent. I say good riddance.
they are in dream land...
what they need to do is wake up, take that incredible radio that they slap into $10 phones, make an iPhone clone, no buttons on the front, slap in a browser, WiFi, completely new UI with a string funcional hierarchy and for the love of money do not name it MOTO TUCH
What about iTUCH MOTO?
OMG that is exactly what I wanted to say...
buh bye moto
Complacent?. Rank incompetence more like.
i hate motorola!
their phones are kinda like naomi campbell...they look great on the outside but the rest is just shit!
Yeah, that's pretty much what incompetent management does to a company. That prick was the cause of losses at Qualcomm and now going to be responsible for the downfall of Motorola.
I stopped purchasing Moto phones the day he landed himself a position there.
time to get that C.V, ready
Ryan Block for CEO!
Let's all throw in $5 and buy it. We could all probably do a better job at running the company. Who's with me?
Cue Green Day "Good Riddnance"
sigh, I miss Seinfeld... :-(
If they would have just reworked the MPX properly, none of this would be happening.
Because the original MPX was such a stunning success?
I thought i was clear but let me reword for you.
If they would have just reworked the "original" MPX properly before releasing, none of this would be happening.
If they bumped spec to 64mb of ram instead of the original 32, it would have been a big hit in the smartphone community. You know, as long as a carrier even picked it up.
They then could have turned it into the next razr, releasing new iterations every 2 years or so.
thats over 4.4 million a day
184000 an hour!
can i get a copy of their business plan??!
Business Plan
MOT:
_____________
Q1: FAIL
release RAZR clone v1
Q2:FAIL
release RAZR clone v2
Q3:FAIL
release RAZR clone v3
Q4:FAIL
Golden parachutes
A funny post from iEye!
let's give them a $3Billion bailout. that'll help them economic fundamentals
They don't have friends in Congress, and they're not important to the stability of the economy...
good thing everything's all stable now that we bailed out the billionaires
Q3 Global Marketshare:
Nokia (38.9%)
Samsung (17.%)
Sony Ericsson (8.5%)
Motorola (8.4%)
Sanjay I think on the contrary, Moto's phone ISN'T bright and shiny enough! We want bling!
can we just start putting this image on every article please
Moto probably has the ability to make a decent phone for android, but I can't help but think most of the talent is trying to leave their handset division before it sinks. There is an interesting pattern to observe here though, of ships too big to steer, Motorola has around 66,000 employees, granted the handset division is probably a subset of that. Still.. sony erricson is around 9,000. RIM is around 11,000. HTC is the same size. I very much think this is just corporate getting in the way of making something useful. I didn't mention Nokia because I think they're suffering a similar fate only it takes longer for a giant like that to fall, all the same their new stuff is late and uninspired. The whole of Apple is only around 25,000 employees. I think some of these companies have a huge success and grow just too large to remain competive with young nimble companies.
Yeah, Nokia is going down, because there are companies like Apple with about 6% of the smartphone market (under 1% of the whole market) and RIM, who are completely irrelevant outside North America. Companies you seem to dig are small because their market share is small. They might be very visible on a site like Engadget, but they only have a small slice of the smartphone market.
Comparing employee counts like that is silly, when you consider just how much Motorola does outside of cell phones. Telecom gear, cellular network equipment, public safety radios (huge business!), industrial handheld computers (they bought Symbol a while ago), set top boxes...the list goes on. Hard to compare them with RIM, which really only makes phones (and software for them). Even Sony-Ericcson is pretty much a phone-only business (although Ericcson exists as a separate entity, telecom gear, they've got 75,800 employees according to wikipedia).
Not to say that Moto isn't hurting, I would like to know more about what's going on inside the company. Most of the talk here focuses on their handset business (it is a gadget blog, after all). Management has to be a huge issue, though, if some of the stories I've heard are true.
The sadMoto logo makes me giggle every time.
Which makes T-Mo stock tick up a hair higher, as a few more G1 hold-outs give up and get in line at Non-Union-Mart.
Gonna have to disagree with your 75,800 count there man, wikipedia shows me this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Erricson Employees: "9,400 (as of July 2008)". When Nokia shows me a new product that I want I'll be willing to be quiet about not thinking their future looks very bright.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson
I immediately retract my comment about your data keppo, you are the win. ;)