In what is likely its last quarterly earnings as an independent company, Motorola Mobility (NYSE:MMI) reported that it shipped 5.3 million smartphones and 200,000 tablets in the fourth quarter, in line with weaker expectations it provided earlier this month. As previously reported, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is expected to finalize its acquisition of Motorola this quarter.
Motorola shipped 10.5 million handsets and 5.8 million smartphones in the fourth quarter compared to 11.3 million handset shipments and 4.9 million smartphone shipments in the year-ago period. The company also said it shipped 200,000 tablets in the fourth quarter, and just 1 million for the year. Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ) recently launched two new LTE-enabled Motorola tablets, dubbed Droid Xyboards.
On Motorola's financial side, the company posted net revenues of $3.4 billion, roughly flat from the year-ago quarter. Revenue from the company's mobile devices business clocked in at $2.5 billion, up 5 percent from the year-ago period. The company also reported an $80 million net loss compared to an $80 million profit a year ago. Earlier this month the company blamed its weak fourth-quarter results on "increased competitive environment in the Mobile Device business and higher legal costs associated with ongoing Intellectual Property litigations."
Motorola said it still expects Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of the company to close early this year. Regulators around the world, including at the Department of Justice, still need to approve the deal, after which the Android smartphone maker will become a subsidiary of Google. In light of the impending closure of the deal, and in line with what it did for third-quarter earnings, Motorola did not conduct an earnings conference call for investors.
Google, which licenses Android to Motorola and dozens of other companies, has said Motorola will remain an independent business unit inside the company. Google hopes to use Motorola's patent cache to bolster the Android ecosystem, although numerous Android licensees, including HTC, LG and Samsung have already inked patent licensing deals with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT).
For more:
- see this release
Special Report: Wireless in the fourth quarter of 2011
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