Is Motorola Finally Dying?

[stockholmer]

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=223901

Motorola Mobility Inc. (NYSE: MMI) appears to be teetering on the verge of extinction once again. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)'s announcement this week that it will cut 4,000 jobs at the company it bought a year ago is just the latest signal of the end. (See Google to Cut 4,000 Motorola Jobs.)

Ever since Google struck the $12.5 billion deal to buy Motorola Mobility on August 15, 2011, questions have been raised about what it was getting. Google was very clear that it was buying patents, but it also said it would continue to run Motorola as a separate business to help it "supercharge the Android ecosystem."

So far, however, this just doesn't seem to be happening. Samsung Corp. is getting lauded for its Android smartphones while Google went off and worked with AsusTek Computer Inc. to develop its own-brand Nexus 7 tablet. Hardly a ringing endorsement of Motorola there, Google. In truth, though, the end of Motorola has been in sight for a long time now. The company simply hasn't managed to have a big hit in the marketplace since the RAZR. Remember that?

Here, let me refresh your memory: The Motorola RAZR came out in the fall of 2004. Motorola sold more than 100 million of these clam-shell phones, but it was basically all over by the beginning of 2007. That's more than five years ago now, a lifetime in cellphone terms. The problem for Motorola is that it hasn't come out with a device with anything like the success of the RAZR, and it was blind-sided by the advent of the iPhone and tablet computers. Even a reboot of the RAZR brand in 2011 didn't help. (See Photos: Moto Gets Skinny With 4G RAZR and Moto Needs the RAZR to Burn.) In fact, here at LR Mobile we've been trying to figure out what Moto could do next -- since 2007.

snip

[valerief]

1. Pain Capital will come to the rescue--and decimate the shit out of it. nt

[stockholmer]

4. Google just bought it for the patents, soon they will apply the coup de grâce on the carcass

I have made a fair chunk of change shorting the hell out of it, just as I have done with GM and more recently, Facebook. You cant make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. 20,000 workers will soon feel the same, unfortunately. So too will the state of Illinois' tax coffers.


Motorola Mobility laying off 700 locally, 4,000 worldwide Cuts in Chicago, Libertyville quash state tax incentives tied to level of local workforce

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-13/business/ct-biz-0814-motorola-20120814_1_motorola-mobility-mobile-industry-analyst-libertyville-and-chicago

The deep cuts come less than one month after Motorola Mobility and Mayor Rahm Emanuel made a high-profile announcement that the company would move its headquarters and 3,000 workers from Libertyville to the Merchandise Mart in downtown Chicago next year. The layoffs will suspend a state incentives program that gives Motorola Mobility tax breaks for retaining at least 2,500 local employees.

[Aerows]

2. They make shitty phones

I don't know if that is enough to sentence them to death as a corporation, but I wouldn't buy another one if they were the only people making cell phones. RAZR was enough of a POS for me.

EDIT: RAZR was only a success based upon what it promised, but it had a fatal flaw - battery life. That's why it sank and was despised, notwithstanding the bugged out things it also did. Give me a former RAZR owner, and I will give you about 10 things they hated about it, and why it was a terrible phone.

[KharmaTrain]

3. This Happens Every Decade...

I live near Motorola HQ...and the place is still humming along. While its no longer the cellphone giant it was (back in the 90s before the flip phone and again with the flip phones of the last decade) it still does a substantial business in two-way radio and relay systems used by police departments and the military.

At one point Motorola had factories all over Northern Illinois but most of the flip phone were outsourced to China so the loss of the "mobility" side has little impact with the jobs here. I've heard obituaries for Motorla before (wrote a couple myself) but they keep chugging along...

[Gidney N Cloyd]

5. Agree. For the 30 years I've been around here it's been continual...

...boom & bust cycles at Motorola.

[Raine]

6. First cell phone I had about 20 years ago was a Motorola, it was as big as a

medium sized briefcase but it was a great phone. Later their phones weren't so good, the next cell phone I got was a Nokia. I still feel sentimental toward them though and would hate to see them gone.