RAZR Thin Profits Lead Motorola To Cut Jobs
3500 mainly middle-management jobs are being eliminated at Motorola after its 4th quarter profit figures came out about 48 percent behind last year’s.
As cruel as layoffs are, when Wall Street looks at the big picture for Motorola these layoffs are window dressing. Success in the handset industry is all about products.
The RAZR is yesterday’s profitable handset. The RAZR is now a low-end device. Motorola needs to sell $200+ (after incentives) handsets, and lots of them, to keep the profits rolling in.
What have you got for us today, Motorola?
The KRZR line (in both CDMA and GSM versions) is a sharp-looking handset with solid phone capabilities. The versions for Verizon and Sprint let you do something you can’t even do with an iPhone - download a song directly to your handset, without a PC (or Mac) involved. But it’s not all perfection - this reviewer gripes about the 1.3 megapixel camera (anything under 2 megapixels is sooo 20 minutes ago) and the not-ready-for-prime-time streaming video quality.
And the MOTORIZR release touted at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show was, how shall we put it? Underwhelming? Although its Linux-based platform may have a bright future, the phone’s apparent lack of 3G cutting-edge data speed is a disappointment.
Moto certainly has interesting things up its sleeve, such as the talk of adding Sling-type mobile TV-watching capabilities to its cable boxes. But most of Motorola’s profits come from wireless handsets. And right now, just the threat of the iPhone is casting a shadow over other handset makers’ high-end offerings.
It’s one thing to sell free-after-rebate handsets by the millions. Motorola can do that. But can it get back in the game when it comes to big bucks gotta-have phones of the future?
Motorola, profits, RAZR, KRZR, Linux, Apple, iPhone
[via Baltimore Sun]
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