Motorola Loss Widens, Android Smartphones Planned for Q4
Thu Apr 30, 2009 3:57 pm
Troubled U.S. phone maker Motorola reported a wider first-quarter loss and said it expects to ring up further losses this quarter.
The Schaumburg, Ill.-based company posted a loss of $231 million for the first three months of the year compared with a loss of $194 million for the same quarter last year.
Revenue fell 28 percent during the quarter to $5.4 billion.
Motorola's mobile phone division reported an operating loss of $509 million compared with $418 million a year ago on revenue of $1.8 billion, down a hefty 45 percent from a year ago.
It said it sold 14.7 million handsets in the quarter giving it a 6.0 percent share of the global handset market -- down from 27.4 million a year ago. It enjoyed a 17.5 percent share of the market two years ago.
Motorola enjoyed success with its popular RAZR phone launched in 2005 but has been losing ground since to Apple and Research in Motion as well as other major handset makers such as Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.
"Directionally, I think we're making very good progress in turning this business around," said Sanjay Jha, head of Motorola's handset division. "I'm pretty comfortable with the trajectory from here to the fourth quarter."
Jha said Motorola hopes to have devices based on Google's open-source Android operating systems in stores by the fourth quarter of the year.
