Engadget is relaying the news that Motorola Mobility (the new, self-sufficient company spun off from Motorola Inc.) made a total net profit of $80 million in Q4 2010 while selling a total of 4.9 million handsets. To the average person, these seem like lofty numbers, but $80 million is barely above even for a company the size of Motorola Mobility. Wall Street is similarly unimpressed, seeing as their expectations for the quarter included 5.5 million handsets sold. Given their tepid profits and failure to meet expectations, Motorola seems resigned to a disappointing Q1 of 2001, predicting a drop of 9 to 21 cents per share.
While Motorola Mobility has dominated Verizon's Droid line of phones, it's clear that that has not been enough to keep the company climbing into profitability. Verizon as a whole has not expanded in smartphone sales at the same pace as AT&T, as Horace Dediu of Asymco expertly pointed out in December. In the meantime, Motorola has failed to make any name for itself on any other U.S. carrier and Nokia continues to dominate in Europe.
Moving forward, it's imperative that Motorola establish an identity on other U.S. carriers, particularly since the iPhone is hitting Verizon very soon. The Motorola Atrix, pondered here, is a great start on AT&T, but they will need to bring their best efforts to Sprint and T-Mobile as well. Furthermore, given that Motorola made a slim profit of $80 million this quarter, it may be time to revisit or regret the $100 million in various pay packages CEO and Chairman Sanjay Jha received in 2008, not to mention the 1.8 to 3 percent of the new company he is set to receive now that the Motorola split has gone through.