US mobile maker Motorola has slipped off a fairly lofty financial perch in recent years, with 2008 seeing the company make an astonishing loss of 4.2 billion dollars across all departments. The recently released Droid – an Android system as yet focused on the US market – was supposed to be the savior, but despite dramatic improvements on last year, it seems Motorola are still having serious difficulties making money in the mobile industry, though figures undoubtedly improved towards the end of 2009, suggesting the Droid might just push the company into profit for 2010.
The recently released fourth quarter results show that the total loss over the course of 2009 (all departments) still sits at 51 million dollars. True, that’s a tiny fraction of the loss back in 2008, but it also begs the question, how long can Motorola – no longer one of the top players in the mobile handset market – continue to compete despite making consistent losses across the vast majority of its different business interests? Though the Droid is continuing to make undeniable progress in the American market, it is still falling some way behind the iPhone in terms of sales, and is no longer heavily touted as the ‘iPhone killer’, as it was around its release date.
Known as the ‘Milestone’ in the UK, the Droid is now available for pre-order via various UK service providers and websites, with an estimated launch date of late February 2010. The launch is unlikely to lead to a clamor of the level of that in the US, with numerous reviews finding faults with the handset, though it is arguably the best iPhone alternative on the market at present. The phone will be available on Orange and O2 from the release date.
Towards the end of the year, the Droid itself was making serious profits for Motorola, though the mobile department on the whole was far less successful. The company sold over two million smart phones in total, a fraction of total handset sales, which fall at close to the twelve million mark. In order to bail out the company in full, Motorola will need to sell a whole lot more handsets, with the mobile division specifically currently running at a huge loss of 1.1 billion dollars a year, still a significant improvement on the department’s 2.2 billion loss back in 2008.
