Motorola sold 5 million smartphones in Q4, misses estimates

Motorola Mobility just released revised guidance for thelast quarter, which they will be report in full on January 26^th. Theyestimated sales of $3.4 billion, including 5.3 million smartphones. Motorolasold 10.5 million mobile phones combined, so it appears that Motorola’s Androidphones now account for just over half of all phones they sell.

That ratio tracks the trend in the U.S., where smartphone sales account for close to half of all new handsets sold.The numbers fall well short of the 35 million smartphones that Samsung shippedin the same period. Apple is expected to announce that they also sold 30-35million iPhones. Relative to last quarter, Motorola saw feature phone salesdrop by a third, from 6.8 million phones in Q3, while their smartphones were up10% from 4.8 million sold. It appears that they must have been moving the occasionalDroid RAZR over the holidays!

Although Motorola expects "modest profitability", they will miss analysts expectations. Competitive pressures in the market and the increasing cost of litigation were cited as factors that hurt their financial performance (read: Apple and Samsung, respectively). They pointed to early 2012 as the expected timeline for their acquisition by Google to be completed.

Finally, Moto also posted a reminder that they will be showing off new products at CES...as if we would forget!

source: Motorola