Mobile phones are the biggest selling consumer electronics devices on the planet. An estimated 1.1 billion were sold last year. Yet one of the best known manufacturers of them — indeed the group that helped to invent them — is in such dire straits that it last night hoisted the for-sale sign.
Motorola’s problem is its failure to adapt — both to produce the kind of phones that customers want and to mould itself to the new market conditions in which, with Western markets saturated, growth is increasingly being chased in low-margin emerging markets.
In the fast-changing world of technology, the group’s consistent failure to produce a successor to its Razr model was never going to go down well with investors.
And while Nokia, the number one mobile manufacturer, with European market share of north of 40 per cent, has successfully pinpointed software and services — such as its new Ovi online platform — as the way forward Motorola has failed to do the same.
To be sure the firm has much to attract any buyers — not least its huge brand name. Potential purchasers range from Dell and Rim, the BlackBerry maker, to Asian stars like ZTE.
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But, with Nokia, Sony Ericsson and others sitting with a keen eye to the juicy North American market, where Motorola still dominates, one way or other the US giant will need to act quickly if things are not to get worse.