Analyst: Motorola may exit handset business

Damian Koh | Jan 30, 2008

Good things don't seem to be happening at Motorola, but bad news is certainly coming in droves. Just last week, the company reported an 84-percent decline in its fourth-quarter profit and the newly appointed CEO said that reviving its handset business "will take longer than expected". The company's stock dropped more than 22 percent to US$9.55 as a result.

Adding to the turmoil, an analyst with Nomura International Richard Windsor told clients in a note published yesterday that Moto "may exit the handset business and concentrate on becoming an enterprise and government company". He also raised the speculation of Chinese vendors buying out the company, but turned around to say that that's not likely to happen. Problems he cited are platform- and software-related rather than hardware.

While Windsor has made a very bold comment in his note, it's not hard to see where he's coming from. Motorola has been struggling for the past few quarters and the problem lies not only in platform, software and hardware, but also in the management. In short, it's a whole spiral of trouble that the company can't seem to get out of. We just have to wait and see how things will unfold this year. This will either go down in history as the boldest comment of 2008, or utter bollocks.

Via Market Watch

Filed under: Mobile Phones
Leave a comment | Bookmark | Share