Motorola reports record handset sales

US vendor Motorola on Wednesday reported that its first quarter sales increased 23 per cent to $10.01bn (ВЈ5.6bn), compared to $8.16bn twelve months earlier.

Revenue growth was driven by strong performance in the mobile devices segment, while overall net profit dropped from $692m a year ago to $686m this year, following the company’s aggressive stock repurchase program.

The company’s handset division recorded a 45 per cent year on year increase in sales to reach $6.4bn during the first quarter. Operating earnings increased from $440m a year ago to $702m this year, as the company shipped 46.1 million units, up 61 per cent compared to the first quarter of 2005.

Motorola estimates that its expanded global market share increased to a 21 per cent during the quarter, narrowing the gap between itself and Nokia.

Networks segment sales fared less well during the quarter, decreasing 14 per cent compared with a year ago to $1.43bn. Operating earnings also dropped to $132m, down from $234m in the year-ago quarter, due to a decrease in sales and incurred restructuring charges of $21m.

However, the vendor said it is seeing increasing demand in the wireless broadband space. During the first quarter of 2006, Motorola announced that its MOTOwi4 Canopy products will be used by Earthlink and Google to provide a metro wireless network for San Francisco, alongside an order from Rajasthan, India to deploy MOTOwi4 Canopy products for the first Indian statewide wireless broadband grid. Furthermore, the company signed a 5-year access network deal with MTC Namibia encompassing GSM, GPRS, EDGE and Canopy solutions to deliver a hybrid cellular and wireless broadband network.

The Connected Home Solutions Segment recorded a 7 per cent year-on-year increase in sales to $710m, while operating earnings grew to $15m, compared with $19m in the year-ago quarter.

The company shipped a record 2 million digital entertainment devices, an increase of approximately 48 per cent over the last quarter of 2005 and completed the acquisition of set top box maker Kreatel Communications, which saw the introduction of the first all-digital set-top box portfolio with built-in home media networking capabilities.

Tags: Google, Motorola, MTC Namibia

This entry was posted on April 20th, 2006 and is filed under Brands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.