Do Motorola's falling sales rates represent a temporary dip or signal doom for the company?

Doom

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by Katherine Adams

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Just over forty years ago, Motorola employees were at the top of the world - especially when astronaut Neil Armstrong announced he'd just taken one giant leap for mankind from the moon on a radio made by the technology company.

But the future is no longer bright for 81-year-old Motorola; the gravity of falling sales figures have doomed the end of another well-known American company. The once-mighty Motorola has little chance to escape the black hole brought on by missed opportunities and poor business decisions.

In 1998, Motorola lost its number one spot as a wireless provider to Nokia, which now owns 37 percent of the market. Samsung sits in the number two place with a 19 percent share.

Motorola's numbers: The company owns a mere 5.6 percent of a market it once owned, according to experts.

The former king of wireless has been dethroned by several corporations that recognized the revolution to come. In the growing smart phone market, Nokia is first with 45 percent of all consumer sales, Research In Motion (Blackberry) holds steady at 19 percent and Apple comes in at 13.3 percent.

And Motorola? The numbers couldn't be worse: Its figures are barely a blip on sales charts, at just 0.7 percent. Even the most loyal fans of Motorola's solid experience are finding it hard to swallow such an astronomical dip in consumer sales of the hottest tech toys.

Other than its ultra-thin Razr phone that scored a hit in 2004, Motorola has been constantly losing its grip, and is rapidly falling from the mountaintop it once owned. No new dazzling "must-have" technology has been introduced, other than one phone presented at a San Francisco mobile industry conference in September.

It doesn't say much for an organization that hired 10 presidents in a 12-year period in the handset division, which accounts for 30 percent of Motorola's business. Nor does it rally confidence when several private companies have passed on buying an American icon.

A new co-CEO was hired in fall, 2009, but even his tech-savvy engineering background won't save Motorola. In an industry where change occurs at the speed of light, its recent phone design loaded with Google Android applications is far too little, and far too late. As it stands, more than 20 Android-powered phones will join Motorola's meager offering in 2010.

Motorola's handset sales have dropped a breathtaking 68 percent since 2006. Despite some recent attempts to turn sales around, it would take colossal missteps by competitors, and a stratospheric revival for Motorola to avoid being crushed into nothing more than a handful of dust.

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