I Hate Motorola
Motorola was the hottest handset company in the world three years ago. In 2003, the company had revenue of $27.1 billion and operating income of just over $ 1 billion. By 2005, revenue was up to $36.8 billion and operating income was up to $4.7 billion. Its Razr handset helped it take a 22% global market share. Motorola has three divisions. The handset business is the largest, but the home networking and enterprise pieces of the firm have had steady growth and reasonable margins. Motorola decided not to diversity further into these segments of telecommunication. It gambled that it could continue to gain on No.1 handset company Nokia. The company forgot that a strong product would only do well for so long in a marketplace where highly innovative electronics companies like Samsung and Sony Ericsson have tremendous product development operations. Motorola never built its next hot product. As the Razr aged, Motorola's competitors built similar handsets and added smartphones to take advantage of the global move of cell carriers toward wireless 3G broadband. Motorola now wants to spin-off its handset business, but it is hard to imagine why that does investors any good. From over $26 in late 2006 to about $9 today.
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