Review: Moto Razr2, Q9m fail to excite
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Motorola rode high for a while on sales of its slim, stylish Razr phone. When its competitive edge started to dull, the company set its hopes on the Q, a BlackBerry-like e-mail phone, which it initially thought would sell as well as the Razr.
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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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By Mike Hughlett, Chicago Tribune  Sep. 20--Sure, a bar code reader lacks the "wow" appeal of a sleek cell  phone, but Motorola Inc. needs gadgets to beef up sales to business, too, not  just consumers.
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Motorola's Razr did more than spark the thin phone revolution; it also spawned a rather annoying naming convention that drops vowels from a cell phone's name. From Crave, CNET's gadgets blog.
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No longer is the cellular phone selection limited to the RAZR, a $500 Treo and hundreds of look-alikes and act-alikes. Recent months have brought a wave of new devices that stand apart from the pack in terms of looks and next-generation features.
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(InfoWorld) - Despite signs that mobile Linux is gaining momentum -- such as the launch ofÂ Motorola's Linux-based Razr2Â -- heated competition, confusion about goals, and slow-moving consortiums may be hindering growth. These developments are an indication of how much may be at stake. Between 2006 and 2012, cumulative Linux mobile device shipments are expected to reach 331 million, said Stuart Carlaw, an analyst with ABI Research. Such predictions are drawing interest to the segment from handset manufacturers, software developers, and carriers. The LiMo Foundation, the Linux Phone Standards Forum (LiPS), and the Open Source Development Labs' Mobile Linux Initiative are among the new groups formed over the past couple of years to try to reduce the fragmentation in the mobile Linux market and to encourage interoperability. But at least one mobile Linux vendor is critical of their progress. "They're still trying to figure out where to hold meetings," said Jim Ready, CTO and founder of MontaVista, of the activities of some of the groups. Progress at organizations like LiMo has been extremely slow, agreed Dan Cauchy, director of product marketing at MontaVista. "I'm concerned about what that will mean to the actual marketplace because each member company is building phones regardless," he said. Phone makers and software developers don't want to wait for the groups to decide on platforms and standards so they continue to make products that may not ultimately conform to the parameters set by the groups or interoperate, he said. Mobile phones are already plagued with interoperability issues that make it difficult for applications to run properly on all handsets. This problem hurts users interested in applications that are incompatible with their handsets. Also affected are software developers who have to make multiple versions of the same application for different handsets. Some operators, including Vodafone, have said they will soon require that all of their handsets run only two or three specific operating systems as a way to ensure that applications will work across all phones. The operators don't want to introduce Linux devices into their lineup of phones if they only exacerbate the interoperability problem. While MontaVista is active in many of the groups, it is also continuing to work closely with handset makers to meet their needs. According to Cauchy, 90 percent of mobile Linux devices--including Motorola's Razr2--are running MontaVista Linux. Confusion about goals in the industry could also be dragging down progress. "It's clear that the leading operators are telling the industry to consolidate," said Jason Whitmire, general manager of mobile solutions for Wind River, a Linux software developer with products for mobile phone vendors. "They expect to use only one OS stack or maybe two, so they have asked the industry to join together and do something." By his count, there are 22 different flavors of mobile Linux. But MontaVista has a different perspective. "Some of these consortiums are under the impression that they'll provide one stack to satisfy the world and I think carriers are saying, 'I don't think so'," said Cauchy. Choice is one of the main reasons driving the mobile Linux industry. In an ironic twist, Symbian, the mobile phone operating system, was first created by a group of mobile phone makers that feared that Microsoft, which had just entered the mobile market, might dominate like it did in the PC industry. But more recently, Symbian has begun to dominate the smart phone market enough that mobile operators wanted to be sure they had another choice, Carlaw said. Mobile Linux is an attempt to ensure that Microsoft and Symbian aren't the only options, he said. "The whole point is to have choice and alternatives," said Ready. "It's because of this paranoia about having one supplier ... that's why these consortiums show up." Too much choice, however, has been causing problems. At a mobile Linux conference in Madrid this week, fragmentation was a key concern particularly among smaller operators, Whitmire said. Without consolidation, they see costs related to supporting mobile Linux soaring, he said. Wind River, MontaVista, and others have one less potential competitor to worry about. During a keynote presentation at the Madrid conference, Red Hat said it has no intention of entering the embedded device Linux market. Fragmentation is an issue in mobile Linux, but some advancements are happening, Carlaw said. He's seen real progress in terms of different layers of the stack working together. It's been more difficult to improve on "horizontal" fragmentation. But that's starting to get better too, he said. For example, the LiPS Forum recently began working with the Open Mobile Alliance to improve interoperability both between mobile Linux devices and between Linux and non-Linux phones. It's natural to have this amount of fragmentation at this stage of the market development, and companies appear to have the incentive to continue to work it out, he said. "Carriers are still saying they're looking at Linux as a long-term prospect," he said.
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Motorola Inc's  rapidly  declining fortunes in the past few years have sent shock waves  through the wireless industry, providing a stark reminder that  what is cool one day may be deeply out of favor the next.
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By Anna Marie Kukec  akukec@@dailyherald.com  Speed counts. So does style. And Motorola Inc. leveraged both Tuesday.
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Motorola Inc. unveiled its highly anticipated &quot;Q&quot; cell phone Monday, joining other manufacturers in aiming for businesspeople who want their e-mail to go.
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I take it all back Confessions of an analyst A couple of months, I committed the cardinal sin of criticising a mobile device without actually having used one. When I posted my initial reaction to the BlackBerry 8100 âPearlâ here, I was bothered by the thought that RIM had sold out its loyal business users by bowing to the pressure of the consumer market and cluttering the most effective mobile email product line available today with a gimmicky track-ball and trivialities such as a camera and media player.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Motorola has a strategy for improving its struggling cell phone business: Be boring. That's what CFO Tom Meredith said on Wednesday during the Citi Investment Research Global Technology Conference. "I believe we can right our ship by being boringly consistent," he said during a webcast of the conference. Motorola's history as a cell-phone developer is anything but boring, littered with iconic phones from the StarTac clamshell 10 years ago to the recent hit with the Razr. But you'd be hard pressed to name an iconic product from market leader Nokia or Sony Ericsson, Meredith noted. "Yet, when you look at their profitability and successes, you see they have a portfolio that was complete and ran the gauntlet from mass market to feature to enterprise, and they effectively competed more effectively than we did," he said. Taking a cue from competitors, Motorola will focus going forward on developing a broad portfolio of phones that will be attractive to a wide range of users rather than looking for the next Razr, he said. Combined with a couple of other new strategies, Motorola should be able to regain lost market share, he said. For instance, Motorola hopes to do better in developing markets like India and China. While Meredith didn't describe how, he did point to ways that the company has stumbled there recently. He said that Motorola missed an opportunity with its Moto phone, which was designed to be a low-end handset for developing markets. That phone failed because it didn't have a color screen and neglected to recognize how important texting is in its target markets, he said. Motorola should also benefit from some developments Apple's iPhone has spurred. Operators have historically resisted including Wi-Fi capabilities in phones, he said. But because the iPhone includes Wi-Fi, the operators are starting to come around and recognize that it's inevitable, Meredith said. "I think Steve [Jobs] and Apple did companies like Motorola a favor in that regard," he said. The iPhone may also have generated interest in the touchscreen concept. Motorola has sold 12 million phones with touchscreens, primarily in China, but hasn't targeted them to North America. The company is still watching the market and listening to carriers, but it may introduce touchscreen phones in North America, he said. Motorola recently reported that slow sales of mobile phones contributed to a second quarter loss of $28 million.Â It also cut 3,500 jobsÂ in the first half of the year and is in the process ofÂ laying off another 4,000. The struggles have put company CEO Ed Zander in the spotlight, but the board has not had a "no confidence" vote in their leader, Meredith said, in response to a question from the audience.
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The quad-band Motorola (NYSE: MOT) RAZR V3 from Cingular Wireless is an ultra-slim, GSM/GPRS messaging phone with an internal antenna that features a 2.2-inch, high-resolution color screen, a 3D graphics engine, a push-to-talk radio and global roaming capabilities courtesy of the onboard SIM card.
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Thanks to the Razr fad, there are plenty of thin phones out there by now. But in terms of sheer smallness, the options remain slim.
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Handsets better for cooking than talking
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These cell-phone boosters promise more stable calls, but how much improvement can consumers expect?
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By BRUCE MEYERSON NEW YORK - Thanks to the Razr fad, there are plenty of thin phones out there by now. But in terms of sheer smallness, the options remain slim.
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AT&amp;T already isn't winning rave reviews, but would any provider? Here are five things to hate about mobile carriers