Motorola (NYSE: MOT) reported a muted quarter in-line with its earlier pre-announcement. The company reported revenues of $9.43 billion versus $9.61 billion a year ago. The earnings line was disappointing at a loss of $.08, in-line with the pre-announcement. This was versus a healthy $.27 a year ago.

CEO Edward Zander, gave very tepid guidance for both the revenues and earnings numbers for the second quarter and the outlook for phone units as well. Chicago-based Motorola is trying to launch the Rizr, a natural replacement to the successful Razr line. The Rizr will be a slide-down model. The company saw unit sales drop but amazingly was able to hold its pricing structure flat. If not the results would have been far more disastrous.

In the conference call, Mr. Zander refused to utter the name of arch-competitor Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), but referred to it only as "the West Coast company." He pondered what features Apple will offer its customers when it rolls out its much-anticipated iPhone.

Motorola is also having quality control issues in India, a major market for Motorola. It has not been able to get the software to work seamlessly to handle the various Indian language dialects. The good news is that the pricing structure is holding up in the Indian market place, if only temporarily.

Carl Icahn, the corporate raider-restructurer, has announced a 3% share position in Motorola and has asked for a seat on the board of directors. he claims that Motorola's current board members are too placid in view of the company's issues. He certainly will make Motorola worth following in what will surely be a difficult year.

Analysts will take their current consensus estimate of $.49 earnings per share down for this year and re-examine the $1 estimates for 2008

Georges Yared is the CIO of Yared Investment Research. For more growth ideas please visit the web site.

Motorola: Not naming names, but not looking too hopeful, either originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.