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Motorola has long been the No. 2 supplier of mobile handsets in the world, and has always been regarded as one of the overall top mobile companies. Well, their handset ranking is in jeopardy, with Samsung set to catch them this year. Their overall market value has shrunk, too, as Research In Motion has passed them. This isn’t so much to poke fun at Motorola as to tout the achievements of RIM.

Research In Motion’s shares rose 5.6 percent to $227.52 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading, giving the company a market capitalization of $42.3 billion. Shares of Motorola fell 1 percent to $17.90 on the New York Stock Exchange, yielding a market value of $41.4 billion.

Think about this, too: shares of RIM have risen 78 percent this year, while Motorola has fallen 13 percent. This is said to be the result of Motorola relying on their seemingly outdated RAZR (with variations like the KRZR). Of course, each new BlackBerry is just a variation of the previous one, but there’s a distinct difference: The BlackBerry is functional, therefore needs not be new and fancy every time, while cell phones are like accessories in that they need to be glitzy to get attention.

What if we told you that Motorola’s latest annual sales were $42.9 billion and RIM’s were just $3.04 billion? Even more shocking. Of course, Motorola makes a wider variety of products, thus the higher sales numbers and gross profit. However, when it comes to profit margins, RIM is firmly in the lead.

Analysts forecast RIM’s sales to reach $6 billion this year — and that’s just in the US. This is particularly noteworthy, because the mobile phone market may only grow 16 percent. For RIM to have a 45 to 50 percent increase would be remarkable for the company

[Bloomberg]

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