Insert Lame “New Moto Phone CLIQs With Investors” Pun Here
by John Paczkowski
Posted on September 11, 2009 at 10:32 AM PT
Motorola is getting a bit of long lost love from Wall Street today, now that it has unveiled the CLIQ–the Android-powered handset with which it hopes to regain market share in the intensely competitive cellphone business. Shares in the company spiked more than seven percent after the CLIQ announcement Thursday, and today they’re up well over six percent at $8.49.
Clearly, there’s quite a bit of enthusiasm around the device and its Motoblur feature, which connects a variety of social networking services to the phone’s core functions.
Said Mark Sue, an analyst at RBC Capital: “Our initial take is favorable, and it seems that Motorola is carving out a niche in the crowded smartphone market by focusing on socially minded demographics as opposed to enterprise users or pro-sumers. We think it’s a step in the right direction.”
C.L. King analyst Lawrence Harris was similarly impressed. “Our initial impression of the CLIQ is that it is not an iPhone killer, but that it will be a contender,” he said in a research note issued today. “…Initial reviews suggest that the CLIQ’s build quality is excellent with a solid keyboard, two important selling points.”
And Tavis McCourt at Morgan Keegan said the CLIQ is a credible device–assuming Motorola (MOT) can sell enough of them. “MOTOBLUR clearly differentiates a Motorola Android-based smartphone from others on the market and provides Motorola a fighting chance at successfully turning around Mobile Devices with Android-based devices,” he noted today.
“The CLIQ appears to be a solid touch screen smartphone,” McCourt added, “but we will defer from offering a more confident opinion until we get a chance to test one and note that we expect the upcoming Motorola Android-based device for Verizon Wireless may be somewhat more impressive. We believe Motorola ultimately needs to sell about 2 million smartphones/quarter in order to become sustainably profitable in its Mobile Devices business.”
McCourt’s conclusion: “Given Motorola’s global distribution, this does not require a ‘home run’ product, but only a series of ‘solid’ products. The CLIQ appears to be a good first step in this turnaround.”
Comments
as an owner of mot stock, i’m hoping for the best, but the phone is no impressive at all. im curious at to the price point on these phones because its hard to imagine that customers will shell out more than $100 for this
Posted by Jim Jackson at September 11th, 2009 at 11:21 amThere are rumors circulating that T-Mobile may offer it for free to new subscribers, or $399.99 otherwise. I’ve not been able to confirm, though.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/0.....-400-stra/
Posted by John Paczkowski at September 11th, 2009 at 11:35 amall of these ‘analysts’ couched their comments with “step in right direction” garbage…
none of them said the truth:
motorola has given up its software operating system to google in a last ditch effort to compete with iphone…and google’s android isn’t ready for prime time and perhaps never will be. Anyone using Orkut today?
Posted by Sam Harrison at September 11th, 2009 at 12:07 pmWhat’s amazing with the branding is they are equating “click” with Web, but we’re already almost 3 years into the tappable Web, the touch screen pocket Web, which Motorola is not involved in at all. FAIL. This is 2005’s entry into the smartphone market, it’s not even close to what is needed for 2010. Why would anyone turn down a $99 iPhone for the CLIQ? I can’t come up with a single reason. And the MotoBlur thing could easily be just a single iPhone app.
I have kind of a soft spot for Motorola because I used a lot of G3 and G4 Macs back in the day, but the CLIQ is just outrageously wrong-headed.
Posted by Fred Hamranhansenhansen at September 11th, 2009 at 5:13 pm