Motorola, the company that manufactured the first commercially available cell phone, saw its overall sales drop 21% in this year’s f
irst-quarter. Sales dropped to $7.45 billion from last year’s first-quarter sales number of $9.43 billion. Motorola’s cellphone division dropped 39% compared to the sales numbers from first-quarter 2007.
The mobile phone division lost $418 million during the quarter, nearly 80% more than the $233 million it lost during the same period last year. Motorola only sold 27 million handsets in the first-quarter, as it saw its share of the global market fall below 10%, down from the 22% of market share it had in 2006.
Motorola’s enterprise mobility solutions division did see growth. This branch of the company sells computing and communications equipment to businesses. That unit’s operating profits grew by 9%.