Google acquisition target Motorola Mobility Oct. 27 reported weaker-than-anticipated Android smartphone and tablet sales, including only 100,000 Xoom tablets.
Motorola, which is in the process of being acquired by
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) for $12.5 billion, reported earnings of $3.26 billion on
12 cents per share. While this was an 11 percent boost from a year ago, it fell
short of Wall Street analysts' consensus of $3.37 billion on 6 cents per
share.
Motorola boosted smartphones sales by 9.1 percent for Q3,
as sales of its first Atrix handset, the Droid 3 and other smartphones grew by
400,000 units. Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek had been modeling
Motorola to report sales of 5.1 million smartphones for the quarter.
The weaker-than-expected showing could mean the company
won't meet its projected target of 21 million to 23 million smartphone sales
for 2011, noted Susquehanna Research analyst Jeffrey Fidacaro, who was
expecting 5.5 million Android sales and suggested that the company lost 30
basis points of worldwide smartphone market share to Samsung, HTC and others.
However, Fidacaro also allowed that Motorola could get a
nice boost in the fourth quarter from full quarter sales of the high-end Droid Bionic handset, as well as the
launch of the Droid Razr, a 7.1-inch-thin Android handset that will go on sale
Nov. 10.
At 100,000 units, Motorola's Xoom sales were atrocious
against even the company's own Q2 sales of 440,000 Xoom slates. By comparison,
Apple sold 11.1 million iPads in its third quarter. Misek, who had been expecting
300,000 Xoom unit sales, said HP's $99 TouchPad firesale hurt
Motorola.
The tablet maker even launched a 4G LTE Xoom in September
and a discounted "family edition" Xoom earlier this month, but failed to spark
sufficient interest for the first Honeycomb tablet in the market.
While Motorola is reportedly working to roll out two new 4G
LTE Xoom machines this holiday, it won't
get any easier for the Xoom.
Misek also expects Amazon's Kindle Fire to squeeze the
Xoom in Q4.
The Fire, which will launch Nov. 15 for $199, could sell up to 5 million units during the holiday season.
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