Schaumburg (Illinois), June 10: Motorola Inc. today lowered its sales forecast and said its earnings would miss Wall Street forecasts for the second quarter, blaming a decline in cellular phone sales in Asia. Its shares fell 3.5 percent by mid day.
The cell-phone maker also said it would lower full-year sales and earnings estimates when it announces second-quarter results in mid-July.
Its personal communications segment lost sales partly because of the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome and partly because of excess inventory from Asian phone makers, Motorola executives said.
Further complicating sales was a late-May earthquake that damaged the company`s semiconductor plant at Sendai, Japan, temporarily disrupting manufacturing.
As a result, the company downgraded its second quarter sales expectation to between $6 billion and $6.2 billion from between $6.4 billion and $6.6 billion.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson first call had been expecting revenue of $6.4 billion.
Motorola chairman and CEO Christopher Galvin said in a conference call with business analysts that he believes Asian health officials are successfully controlling SARS, and that sales continue growing in the rest of the world.
"Our cellular handset business in North America, Latin America and Europe are continuing to make good, solid progress," Galvin said.
Bureau Report