Motorola is still achieving good profits and investing in new products such as the MC 9500 mobilecomputer despite the global financial crisis and a decline in customer demand, a European manager
told CEP-Research.2008 was a successful year for Motorola growing at double-digit rates, even if slightly lesssuccessful than 2007 when Motorola grew about 35%, Daniel Dombach, Director EMEA IndustrySolutions, said in an interview at the Post-Expo in Hannover earlier this month.
Asked about the current impact of the crisis, he commented: “This year is certainly impactedby the crisis with the overall market going down. Our revenues have also gone down, but much moremoderately than the overall market. It will continue to be a hard year.”
But the US mobile solutions manufacturer remains optimistic for the future. “We are wellpositioned on the market. We are satisfied with the profits we continue to achieve and veryconfident that we will be able to keep our good profits next year,” Dombach stated. “Customerdemand has gone down, too, as our customers have become more cautious during this year. We oftenhad situations when projects were postponed. But we are confident that the situation will improvein the near future.”
At its Post-Expo stand, Motorola showcased its new mobile computer MC9500, which isespecially targeted at the transport and logistics industries. The new product is an advanced modelof the MC90 which has been the company’s most successful product with over 1.5 million sales overthe last six years. Both products will co-exist and will be used independently for differentpurposes, Dombach said.
“We have received an amazing feedback so far and have had intensive talks with our bigcustomers. There are huge advance orders or projects in the pipeline with customers intending tobuy large quantities of the product,” he explained.
The MC 9500 has new and improved functions along with a stronger processor and more memoryequipped with a barcode reader for 1D and 2D, a laser scanner and a mega pixel camera as imager.Although already available in the previous model, these devices were not combined in this waybefore as technology has developed further since the MC90 launch. The tool has a modular keyboardsystem and different keyboard sets can be set up according to customer needs. In addition, Motorolahas introduced a new battery concept allowing the recognition of the loading status and life spanof the battery at the push of a button.
“We find it very important that companies are now thinking about implementing mobile datacollection technology as it helps to simplify and to automate business processes related to dataentry,” Dombach emphasised. “When detecting a barcode, I read all the data automatically. Thealternative solution is to write down the serial numbers, collect them during the day and thenforward it to the data entry office at the end of the day which creates a time lag and many sourcesof error as well as additional costs. That means that many companies implementing the mobile datecollection technology to make their processes more efficient and increase the efficiency of itsemployees will profit from it by the end of the crisis as they will be ahead of their competitors.”
In terms of Motorola’s position on the market, Dombach said: “We are clearly the number 1 onthe market of mobile data collection technology but it is important to distinguish between thedifferent kinds of technology, for example the handscan equipment and mobile computers.”
In the last few years, Motorola has been intensively cooperating with different logisticsplayers. For example, it has been involved in the DHL SmartTruck project and is a partner of DHLInnovation Centre.
Looking ahead, Dombach said that the company plans to win a larger market share and hasmanaged to take over some market shares from competitors this year. “We will continue focusingespecially on the logistics sector, trade and manufacturing. But we also plan to expand ouractivities in the healthcare sector, energy providers and public authorities, just to name a few.”
