Motorola Set-Top Sales Jump in 1Q
Vendor to Ramp Up Production of CableCARD-Enabled Boxes
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 4/18/2007 6:19:00 AM
Motorola sold a quarterly record 4.9 million digital set-top boxes in the first three months of the year as cable operators rushed to roll out devices with integrated security functions ahead of the Federal Communications Commission’s July 1 ban on them.
For the quarter ended March 31, Motorola’s Connected Home Solutions group reported sales of $1.04 billion, an increase of 42% compared with $732 million for the same period one year earlier. The unit’s operating earnings were $113 million, more than double $47 million in the year-ago quarter
Overall, Motorola’s financial results were not as rosy. The company reported a 2% dip in sales to $9.4 billion and a net loss of $181 million for the first quarter of 2007. It attributed the subpar performance to weak mobile-phone sales, which dropped 15% for the quarter compared with the year-ago period.
This month, Motorola began a major changeover to manufacturing set-tops with removable CableCARDs, which FCC rules will require operators to deploy after July 1, and the vendor expects to ramp up volume production of CableCARD-enabled boxes in May.
However, Motorola will continue to make and sell set-tops with embedded security, including the popular DCT700 model, for customers outside of the United States or those that have been granted FCC waivers.
The company’s set-top shipments for the quarter included 1.1 million digital-video recorders. Sales of its video-on-demand servers hit 500,000 streams deployed worldwide.
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09/04/2009FCC Grants DTA Waivers To Four Vendors
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09/24/2007
