NEW YORK — Motorola on Thursday reported a sharply higher profit for the second quarter and stabilized its long revenue decline as its strategy of focusing on smartphones like the Droid bore fruit.
Co-CEO Greg Brown said he expects the company to post a revenue increase for the third quarter, which would be the first such increase in three years.
The Schaumburg, Ill., company reported net income of $162 million, or 7 cents a share in the April-June quarter. That’s up from $26 million, or 1 cent per share, a year ago.
Excluding items, Motorola would have earned 9 cents a share. That exceeded the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters by a penny a share.
Overall revenue fell 1.5 percent to $5.4 billion from $5.5 billion. Analysts expected $5.2 billion.
Revenue in the cell phone unit was $1.7 billion, up from $1.6 billion in the first quarter. The total number of cell phones still fell, from 8.5 million to 8.3 million, but Motorola sold more of its pricey smartphones: 2.7 million, compared with 2.3 million in the first quarter.
The head of phone unit, Sanjay Jha, said he expects it to post its first year-over-year revenue increase since 2006 in the third quarter.
Motorola’s phone sales have been sliding since then, when the Razr phone was at the height of its popularity.
Jha sounded a cautious note about smartphone sales, refusing to raise the year’s unit sales forecast because supplies of critical chips are short.
Investment lagged during the recession, and chipmakers are now scrambling to meet demand.
