Idle Musings: Chances Of Motorola Ditching The Handset Business Seem Slim
from the go-back-to-selling-startacs dept
There's some buzz today about a research note from an analyst firm suggesting that Motorola might ditch its struggling handset business. However, as Eric Savitz at Barron's points out, even the analyst who brought up this possibility doesn't seem to think it's likely. Motorola has really had quite a roller coaster ride in the handset business over the years. Every so often it seems to hit on a specific handset design that catches on... but then forgets that it needs to keep innovating. Remember the Motorola Startac of the mid- to late-90s? Everyone had one of those. And then, everyone else innovated past Motorola while it kept releasing the same phone over and over again with minor improvements. The same sort of thing happened in the mid-2000s, as Motorola had a hit with its RAZR phone. Again, however, all the other handset makers eventually leapfrogged (or should that be LPFRG'd) Motorola, leaving Motorola in trouble once again. The research note points out that the business is so far behind that the company might even have trouble selling off the division to a Chinese manufacturer -- the strategy Siemens used to dump its struggling handset division to Benq a few years back. At this point, it still seems unlikely that Motorola will exit the business, but it seems pretty clear that the company needs a strategy a little more long term then "let's come up with an iconic phone every 10 years and then sit back."
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: handset business, razr, startac
Companies: motorola
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in thread ]
RAZR Burn
[ link to this | view in thread ]
well....
Then I got the phone home, and found out it was a "verizon wireless RAZR" and every single god damn feature of the phone has been disabled, and I'm stuck in a 2 year contract with verizon for a piece of crap phone that I absolutely hate.
I know it's not Motorola's fault for this piece of crap I have now. But I'll still never forgive them for making a custom phone for verison with none of the god damned advertised features that the RAZR is famous for. So I will never buy another motorola again, nor will I ever use VZW again.
The goddamn fuckers (pardon my language) even disabled the fucking vibrate-then-ring feature. Cause I might forget to buy ringtones if I dont listen to the ringer.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I don't think Motorola would give up their handset division. Some of the best profits were (for the most part) do to the handset part of the business. There's no way they could justify losing the potential profit. But I guess it happens all the time. Funny how’s these big multi billion dollar company’s have so little insight on their own doings.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
I want my count down timer back on my LG. It is still on the Sprint version of the phones. Hopefully they will stop mucking about with the software like they claim will.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Motorola needs to finish the engineering
The Razor has software for sharing data with your computer. Dozens of calls to their tech line, web site etc have not produced the fix for the software communication error.
Joe Public would have quit long ago in disgust. The deeper I go in Motorola the more indifference and incompetence I meet. The company is all advertising and glitz with virtually no desire to complete the picture.
Lazy group - probably think they're still making walkie talkie's for the military.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]