Motorola needs to get someone to write a book about them, outlining their successes and their mistakes. And devote an entire chapter on why they shouldn’t rely on a single product too much. Remember the Startec? Well that phone sold like mad, and then suddenly it didn’t and Motorola stock swooned.
History is repeating itself with RAZR, which has been milked to death, and the sales have just nose-dived, which is why the company is reporting losses and is bracing for dismal times ahead.
Motorola is now lowering its sales from previously announced (January 2007) estimates of between $10.4 billion and $10.6 billion to the $9.2 billion to $9.3 billion range in the first quarter of 2007. Losses, oh yeah, they got those too. They say, they are shifting focus to beefing up margins, which despite everything that has transpired makes me believe that they will be a bidder for Palm.
“This is a fast business, very fast,” said Ed Zander, Motorola’s chief executive officer, told the Wall Street Journal. “And we just didn’t react fast enough.”
“Motorola is trying to move away from the price game for market share, but the product portfolio at the moment is lacking in the high-end and the low-end,” writes RBC Capital Markets analyst, Mark Sue. You can say that again Mark!
Motorola, so poorly run . . . Sometimes, I am surprised that they are still in business. Much like IBM, you have to wonder how much value could be unlocked by a complete top-down process makeover — certainly, in the tens of billions.
I agree – i wonder how can a company in the biggest bull market for cellphones and broadband keep blowing it all the time. i mean there is so much they can mess up – the market momentum should basically be enough to carry them through, but not sure. IBM of the past….
They need to make phones that have more vowels. I’m tired of RAZR, KRZR and other phones. Motorola made a really good phone in the Startac way back when. They don’t have anything in the way of higher end phones that can compete with HTC/Palm/WM5 devices on the market. They just make those phones. But they do have the midas touch in reverse – remember Iridium?
I’d like to see them take a beating. Maybe then they can shed dead weight and start to bring back the company.
They can start by ditching iTap for phones and going with T9 for predictive text.
Motorola’s a hit driven business. Which is fine if you know how to bring out the next hit while the first one is waning, but it doesn’t look like they have another rabbit to pull out of the hat.
I’m not sure how they can continue to operate as a maker of chips and also the form factors. The two businesses are completely different and Motorola should decide what one they are in.
Article has a mistake, Motorola made a Startac, not a Startec
I don’t know how you can say that the RAZR is dead, They are still one of the top 10 selling cellphone models in the US, and thats the only market I care about. LOL
Does anyone know the actual downturn in numbers related to Motorola’s losses? I really doubt that they’re numbers are 1 billion per quarter less, just because a few RAZR’s aren’t being sold…
Of course, I just noticed that the date on this discussion is for March 22, 2007, not march 22, 2008…. Motorola seems to be doing fine. LOL
Yea, I’m stupid, Sorry…
I wonder if there is goin to be another version of Razr like Razr4 or Razr 5, something like that.
I like the way Razr look and how it approach the people lifestyle of smokin hot girl.