Motorola Reports Stellar Q2 Profits, Smartphone Boost
For its second fiscal quarter, ended June 30, Motorola reported profits of $162 million, or 7 cents per share, up more than 600 percent from profits of $26 million, or 1 cent per share, in the year-ago quarter. Quarterly revenues were $5.41 billion, down 1.5 percent from $5.5 billion.
Overall, its mobile devices business saw a 6 percent decrease in sales to $1.7 billion for the quarter, but it shipped 2.7 million smartphones (as part of 8.3 million handsets sold overall), up from 2.3 million in the first quarter.
Some analysts speculated that Droid sales were helped by a shortage of HTC Droid Incredible phones during the period, but on Motorola's earnings call Thursday, Co-CEO Sanjay Jha said, "I don't think the shortage of Incredibles had as much impact as you may think."
Motorola's Droid X launched earlier this month, joining the ranks of the year's most buzzed-about smartphones, but it is sold out through early August as Motorola and carrier Verizon hustle to meet pre-order backlog demand.
Motorola's business mobility unit was up 10 percent in the quarter, accounting for $1.9 billion in sales. Its network equipment business, which Motorola announced last week would be sold to Nokia Siemens, was down 2 percent, accounting for $967 million.
The upbeat earnings come as Motorola prepares to split into two separate companies: Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions.
Jha will head up Mobility, which covers Motorola's mobile devices and home business, and co-CEO Greg Brown will head Motorola Solutions, covering its networks and enterprise mobility divisions where Motorola does much of its channel business.