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A rough fourth quarter pulled down global cellphone shipments to 4.9% for the year, the slowest rate of growth since 2001. Year over year, Q4 saw a decline of 10.5% in handsets shipping. Nokia, Samsung, LG are the top 3 in market share, controlling over 65% of the market. The much-belabored Motorola checks in at #4 at 8.5% for the year; compared to 14.2% in 2007, ouch. The decline by Moto helped LG sneak on by.
In fact, three of the top five manufacturers posted negative growth numbers for Q4. Nokia, Moto, and Sony Ericsson. Again, Motorola was most affected, going from 40.9 million handset shipments in Q4 2007 to a dismal 19 million handset shipments in Q4 2008. Yes the economy is bad, but LG and Samsung found ways to post some growth. It seems that growth may have been at Moto’s expense.
Cut it out
Upon realization of these numbers, Motorola moved to cut 4,000 jobs. These cuts are on top of the 3,000 the company announced in November. A cold winter at Moto for sure.
Surf’s up?
Is there a bright star on the horizon? Perhaps. The new MotoSurf looks promising. While the company is hush-hush on releasing the phone in the US, if I interpreted the blank stare and the “I can’t comment on that” from the Moto rep correctly, we’ll see it before too long. It is a nice, light phone that should be very inexpensive and allow the masses to get in on this whole touch screen experience. Phones for the masses is Moto’s wheelhouse and I am rooting they can find footing once again. It looks to be a decent offering and might convert a good many flip phone owners coming off contract.
Take me to your Android leader
Either us bloggers keep bringing this up or Moto keeps mentioning it, I am not sure which. Android comes up when you mention Moto now, and while it isn’t the darling OS of the moment, we can be sure we’ve not heard the last of it. Moto set out to create phones based on the OS and we expect to see something next month in Barcelona at the GSMA World Congress, less than a month away.
Source: [Strategy Analytics]
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