Motorola Only Sold a Million Tablets in 2011

Posted by | 01/26/2012 | 5 Comments

Motorola has released its Q4 and 2011 earnings today and well, it’s not pretty. Motorola Mobility has announced that it lost some $80 million on $5.3 billion in revenue during Q4, a huge drop from the same quarter in 2010 which saw the company earn just around $110 million in profit. Also included were some sales numbers that might just make you cringe.

A couple of days ago, Apple announced that it had sold 15.3 million iPads in Q4 alone. Motorola? It sold a grand total of a million tablets in 2011. Yes, one million tablets over the course of the entire year.

And it gets worse.

Motorola also confirmed that it shipped a measly 200,000 tablets in Q4 2011. That’s it. So, at this point, it’s now safe to call both the Motorola Xoom a flop and you probably wouldn’t be out of line deeming the Droid Xyboard a flop as well.

Motorola

The Xoom had problems right out of the gate with features like 4G LTE missing at launch and it apparently was just never able to recover.

Overall, Motorola shipped 42.4 million devices with 18.7 of those being smartphones. Shipped is different than sold and it’s unlikely that the company was able to sell anywhere close to those numbers.

Earlier today, HTC confirmed that it would be shipping fewer devices in 2012 with a focus on quality over quantity. It also said that it would shift its focus away from tablets.

You have to think that Motorola, which also announced that it would be selling fewer models in 2012, will be doing the same.

That decision however may not end up being Motorola’s to make as the company is set to merge with Google. And while Google has said that it would leave Motorola to its own devices, you can’t help but think that Google might be reconsidering that tactic.



Tags: , , , , , , ,

Category: Mobile

About the Author (Author Profile)

Adam is an editor based in San Francisco, California who loves his iPhone 3GS, iPad third-generation and Samsung Galaxy Nexus. He's also becoming intrigued with Windows Phone. You can follow him on Twitter or reach him by email at adam@notebooks.com.

Comments (5)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. [...] Just a day after Motorola announced that it had sold a mere 1 million tablets in 2011, the company has officially launched another tablet coming in the form of the Motorola Droid [...]

  2. [...] by Apple’s iPad.The Motorola Xoom? Hailed as the first credible iPad competitor. It was bought less than a million times in 2011.The Droid-branded tablets, the Droid Xyboard? I’m willing to bet that less than 50,000 have [...]

  3. [...] help predict the overall demand for the new gadget, and with the competition like Motorola  struggling to sell a million tablets during the whole of 2011, Wall Street knows Apple has another winner.Second, we are seeing added confidence in Tim Cook, [...]

  4. [...] Last year, two things happened at Motorola. One, it was bought by Google for $12.5 billion dollars, a move that many believed and still believe to be patent related and not hardware related. And two, it saw its sales slow down. This is a company that was only able to sell a million tablet devices. [...]

Leave a Reply