No sign of Laryngitis Page
It’s now been a month since it was announced that Google boss, Larry Page, has lost his voice. But whether that has any bearing on why the search giant can’t divulge its plans yet for newly acquired Motorola is a moot point. What it did reveal is that operating losses for Motorola, formally acquired two months ago after the $12.5 billion deal was announced last August, totalled $233 million (£148.3 million) – of which $192 million (£122.2 million) was down to its mobile operations.CEO Larry Page was still markedly absent from yesterday’s US conference call and so it was left to finance chief Patrick Pichette to field questions about Motorola.
While he ceded that “mobile is like desktop in 1999″ and that there would naturally be big changes to the company, it was a “little too early” to comment on what they would be.
However he did divulge that Motorola’s latest offering the Razr Maxx had proved a successful device during the quarter.
Otherwise, he revealed, Google itself now boasted more than a million advertisers who were pushing ads to Android users.
Overall Google reported net income in the second quarter of $2.79 billion (£1.77 billion), up from the $2.51 billion (£1.59 billion) it scored in the second quarter of 2011.
At its developer conference in June, Google revealed there are now more than 400 million activated Android devices worldwide compared to a 100 million a year ago.
Staff numbers at the end of last month numbered 54,604, including 20,293 employees at Motorola.
