Motorola Mobility: RAZR carried Q4

Motorola Mobility's RAZR helped boost the company's smartphone shipments and led to a better-than-expected fourth quarter.

The company, set to merge with Google in upcoming weeks, reported a net loss of $80 million, or 27 cents a share, on revenue of $3.4 billion. Non-GAAP earnings, which exclude various charges, were 20 cents a share. That's down from 37 cents a share a year ago, but well ahead of Wall Street estimates. Wall Street was looking for a profit of 6 cents a share on revenue of $3.39 billion.

Add it up and the RAZR looks like it carried strong enough profit margins to deliver strong results on in line sales.

For 2011, Motorola Mobility lost 84 cents a share on revenue of $13.1 billion, up 14 percent from a year ago.

In a statement, CEO Sanjay Jha said the company saw a "very positive consumer response to Motorola RAZR." The company added that the $12.5 billion Google acquisition is expected to close early in 2012.

By the numbers:

• Motorola Mobility shipped 10.5 million mobile devices (5.3 million smartphones) in the fourth quarter and 42.4 million (18.7 million smartphones) for 2011.
• The company's fourth quarter mobile device revenue was $2.5 billion, up 5 percent from a year ago. Operating loss was $70 million.
• Motorola Mobility shipped 200,000 tablets in the fourth quarter. The company rolled out LTE Xyboard tablets with Verizon.
• The home unit, which is dominated by set-top boxes, reported fourth quarter revenue of $897 million, down 11 percent from a year ago. Operating income was $57 million.