Verizon is pretty important to Motorola. Anyone with a TV could have told you that; just about every third commercial on the air last year was focused on Verizon’s “DROID Does” campaign and whichever Motorola DROID phone VZW was touting at the time.
Still, I don’t think I ever could have guessed just how important Verizon was to ol’ Moto in 2010. Go ahead — take a stab at how much of Moto’s revenue came from Verizon last year (assuming you didn’t already read the headline.) You ready for this? Twenty eight percent. Yep. Nearly thirty percent of Motorola Mobility’s revenue last year, all from one carrier.
One carrier that just got the iPhone. Uh oh.
The word comes from Motorola Mobility’s SEC Filing, which puts it rather bluntly:
During 2010, approximately 28% of net revenues were from Verizon Communications Inc. (including Verizon Wireless) (“Verizon”).
Now, lets recall what Verizon and Motorola sold together in 2010: the Droid 2 (and its variants, like Droid 2 Global and R2-D2 edition), Droid X, and the Droid Pro. Three phones, all pitched to consumers the exact same way: they were the anti-iPhone. (Of course, there was also the somewhat out-of-place and non-DROID branded Devour, which they opted to market as the phone that Meghan Fox uses in the bathtub. That phone was discontinued around 4 months later.)
I think my point is pretty clear by now: Motorola depended on Verizon for nearly 1/3 of their revenue, almost entirely around the idea that they made the ultimate not-iPhone phone. Now that Verizon has the iPhone, that’s a probably not a card they’re going to be able to play again. What’s a Motorola to do? They’ve got the XOOM coming up in just two days — but in a world quickly filling with me-too tablets, is a $600-on-contract tablet anywhere near enough?
I’m not a betting man, but if I were… I’d wager that Motorola’s going to take a bit of a hit this year.
