Motorola Ships 2.7 Million Android Phones In Q2, Below Expectations (MOT, GOOG)

Motorola's Android smartphone business is growing, but not as quickly as some analysts had projected.

The company said today that it shipped 2.7 million smartphones in Q2, up from 2.3 million in the first quarter.

But that was below recently raised expectations of 3.2 million from Morgan Stanley's Ehud Geldblum, and 3.1 million from Citi's Jim Suva.

The Reuters consensus was 2.7 million smartphone shipments, so it's not terrible, but Motorola barely met -- and certainly did not exceed -- base expectations for the line that is the future of the company.

(Meanwhile, Motorola's overall mobile phone shipments -- 8.3 million handsets -- was higher than many expected due to strong "dumb" phone sales. But smartphones are what matters, because of their higher revenue and profitability.)

More important is this current quarter, now that Motorola's new flagship Android smartphone, the Droid X, has shipped. Citi's Suva is expecting 3.8 million smartphones shipped in Q3 for Motorola.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/07/29/businessinsider-motorola-ships-27-million-android-phones-in-q2-below-expectations-2010-7.DTL#ixzz0vKQ76jpc