Motorola making money again, thanks to Droid/Milestone

Motorola has just released its first quarter numbers for 2010 and announced that it had turned in a profit somewhat due to strong sales from its Droid smartphone (aka. Motorola Milestone here in Malaysia).

Motorola reported a strong 2.3 million units of the Droid sold, exceeding what it had projected. Despite the strong Droid sales Motorola’s other divisions didn’t do so well with it’s Mobile Devices and Home units still making losses. However, its Enterprise Mobility Solutions and Networks businesses supplied enough profit to prop up the company’s earnings.

In the early 2000s Motorola was amongst the leading mobile phone makers in the world with its iconic Razr line of ultra-thin mobile phones. Now the American company is expected to rank in the seventh or eighth position in global mobile phone market share behind Nokia, Samsung and LG.

In America however, Motorola expects to rank third behind the iPhone and Blackberry.

While the Droid continues to sell well with Verizon in the US, it is not without its challengers. With the HTC Droid Incredible coming into the game, the once much talked about Motorola Droid is looking decidedly dated. HTC’s Droid Incredible is not the only challenger that Motorola has to contend with. With HP’s acquisition of Palm and Dell’s recent announcement of even more Android powered smartphones coming soon, it’s safe to say that the smartphone marketplace is going to be a very crowded.

Motorola expects to sell up to 14 million smartphones for 2010.

[source]