According to The Register, phone giant Motorola has now slipped into third place behind Nokia and Samsung, after a loss-making Q2 2007. El Reg thinks Moto should make more high end handsets, so would that mean more Z8-style Symbian UIQ3 models?
Read on in the full article.
SE should buy Moto's mobile phone business otherwise we will never have proper competition for Nokia.
Hi all,
I really think these stories of Motorola's demise are greatly over exaggerated as they have have a habit of going into decline and the bouncing back even stronger. They allegedly have another 5-6 UIQ devices to come many with even better specs than the Z8. They also have the RAZR 2 V8 and V9 the latter is 2mm thinner than the original and is built from stainless steel and hardened glass plus 500mhz processor A2DP. HSDPA and tactile touch sensitive multimedia keys on the front screen. Which IMO could quite easily be as big if not bigger than the original RAZR as it really offers some outstanding feature's and could well help lift Moto's fortunes again.
Marc
"I really think these stories of Motorola's demise are greatly over exaggerated as they have have a habit of going into decline and the bouncing back even stronger."
I don't think anyone's saying Motorola is dying, they're just saying it's not done well in the past few months. All companies go through bad patches like this.
What people ARE talking about a lot is the demise of the current CEO of Motorola, and it could well be that a new person at the top would turn things around.
You wonder if the success and media frenzy surrounding the RAZR was actually bad for Motorola, perhaps it distracted them from thinking in the long term. Companies need many different hit products to keep growing, not just one.
The Walkman didn't help Sony in the long term, and I suspect Steve Jobs has realised the ordinary iPod can't go on forever either, hence the iPhone.
"They allegedly have another 5-6 UIQ devices to come many with even better specs than the Z8."
That's exactly the positive stuff that I'm trying to get out of this, the Z8 surprised a lot of people by its existence so Moto must have made it for a specific reason. They wouldn't have gone back to UIQ to only make one phone, there must be more at least on the drawing board.
The Z8 has had good reviews, even from The Register (which normally hates anything Symbian-related).
Historically, whenever Motorola mentions cost cutting it seems to be their Symbian side that goes. Does anyone else remember the joint venture with Psion - Odin (or was it Thor)? Cost cutting :frown:
"Historically, whenever Motorola mentions cost cutting it seems to be their Symbian side that goes."
True, and no one knows anything firm about their future Symbian plans, but if a lack of higher end phones has caused their profits to slide, investing in Symbian (or another higher end platform) might be a way back into profit.
If Moto is in trouble because they had too many cheap low-end phone models, cutting phone development spending would just make matters worse.
It's fairly widely accepted now that there WILL be more UIQ / Symbian phones from Motorola, although they haven't officially announced any yet.
From what I've heard, the Z8 is selling well, and is only the start of their resurgance...
Check out why moto is slipping down in India
http://symbian.avinashrathod.com/2007/07/moto-no-no-nokia-yes-yes.html
-Avinash Rathod
Morons buy a phone because some dumbass star uses it (paid by the manufacturer).
"By diversifying its products and its geographical reach, Nokia now seems far less vulnerable to shocks than it was three years ago. "Nokia has definitely learned from that experience," says Neil Mawston, an analyst with Strategy Analytics. "They have spread their risk a lot more."
One lesson Nokia learned was that it doesn't pay to rely too heavily on a few top-selling models."
This is what I've been saying all along. Mobile phones aren't like any other bit of electronics. They're something that the entire world buys, not just a small percentage. You have to make lots of models to suit the requirements of all members of society, not just rich world technology fans.
Many people (especially the rich world media) tend to think of mobile phones as being like PCs, iPods and games consoles, but that's a big mistake.
-There are over 1 billion mobile phones sold every year, which is about 3 million every single day. Games consoles and standalone music players only sell about 0.05 billion per year. Apple showed off that they sold 1 million iPhones in the massively hyped launch week, but Nokia alone sell 1 million phones every day of the year.
-PCs are very useful but immensely expensive by global standards (at least until the $100 laptop initative becomes fully available and until it actually costs $100).
-An iPod has no useful function apart from music, and requires an expensive PC, so you're extremely unlikely to find iPod users in poorer countries.
-A video game console has no useful function apart from games, so it's harder to justify its high cost to someone who doesn't like games or who can't afford it.
A mobile phone though is cheap (you can buy a new one sim-free for about $40) and extremely useful, not just for calls but also for helping do business, and for sending relatively secure messages. Once you can send secure information, you can start using banking services, and in many parts of the developing world people are opening their first bank accounts thanks to the existence of mobile phones. Once you have bank accounts, you're much more likely to be able to build a strong and stable economy, which improves everyone's lives.
Mobile phone networks themselves are so cheap and easy to set up, many places which have never had phone lines before are now connected.
For most people in the world, mobile phones are no longer an expensive novelty, they're an essential tool like a spade or a generator. Expensive toys such as the iPhone and N95 are just a distraction from this, because only a tiny percentage of people will ever buy them.