Motorola clings onto third place

IN A sign that new CEO, Greg Brown, might finally be turning around Motorola's troubled handset division, the company managed to cling to its position as third largest supplier of mobile phones.

It managed to ship some 28.1 million handsets in the second quarter which was way above analysts' predictions of 26.1 million and just above the 27.7 million which LG shipped. IDC estimated that these figures place Motorola third with a 9.2 per cent market share while LG is fourth with 9.1 per cent.

Significantly, Motorola still claims to be the market leader in its own home market (North America). It also introduced ten new models in the quarter including new 3G devices and Brown claims that this year [2008] Motorola will introduce a total of 50 models compared to 40 in 2007.

More importantly, it introduced three touchscreen models which included the Ming A1600 and Ming A1800. So far Motorola says it has already sold eight million handsets in the Ming range. Obviously it needs to do more work on its global branding. Who in the UK would want to buy a handset which is a Ming-er?

Despite all of this, the handset division continued to make a loss of $346 million which was actually larger than the loss it made the same time last year. Brown also hinted that the company expects to sell less handsets in Q3 than it did in Q2.

Against this background, Motorola confirmed that it was hoping to spin off the handset division by Q4 2009. How's that going to work, then? The division is currently propped up by Motorola's other profitable businesses including walkie-talkie style phones.

Perhaps the rumours that Motorola actually intends to sell the handset business will be revived again? µ

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