Motorola and AT&T both reaping the rewards of mobile

After the gloom and doom of the early week, it’s nice to see some good financial news coming in. Ericsson and Verizon both had a lot of bad news to report, with profits down and layoffs up. But both Motorola and AT&T are saying things are looking up – but how up are they?

Motorola:

Motorola did report a net profit for the last quarter of 2009, but overall news is still pretty bad. The profit from 2009 was mostly based on massive cost-cutting. Motorola let an awful lot of people go last year. While the complete loyalty of the manufacturer to the Android platform did see smartphone sales go up, overall device sales still aren’t great – and the manufacturer expects to post a loss in the first quarter of 2010.

AT&T:

AT&T had a somewhat similar story to Motorola – massive cost cuts were the order of the year. But AT&T profits were of a more sustainable sort, as they were based on the growth of wireless and mobile subscribers. As more customers abandon landline phones and move to wireless and mobile, AT&T is positioning itself to attract those subscribers and make revenue from additional wireless services. Unfortunately, in order to make up for the substantial losses that wireline phones will continue making, AT&T may have to cut even more jobs.

What we think?

The one permanent feature of all of these profit/loss reports from 2009 is the massive loss of jobs. Tens of thousands of people have had to be let go as operators and manufactures desperately scrabble to keep afloat as consumers all over the world stop spending.