Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Does MOT have a moat ?

I bought MOT on a momentum, earnings were good, good news of an Ipod phone were inundating the TV stations and newspapers, Ed Zander was the Man.

The thing is, the RokR is a bit of a disappointement, what the RazR did a few months ago, the RokR almost undo in just a few week. The RazR was slick and designish, the RockR is bulky and not up to the latest trend (flip phones, trend which has partly been initiated by Motorola themselves).

But worst of all, the RockR is a lameduck music player, transfet rates between your PC and the phone are 20x slower than the Ipod, (by the way, who got the idea to launch it the very same day as the nano???) the storage of 100 songs is less than what early adopters (the target audience) had 5 years ago on their mp3 players, you can't even download songs directly from your phone, and let's face it Nokia, Samsumg et al won't take too long to market better products...

So, MOT Buy, hold, Sell.... I'm going to hold because dividends and future RazR-like model should bring the stock up, along with news from third world country (where Motorola is about to roll out cheap handset to built brand awareness and gain public markets). But if you are like I was a few months ago, wondering whether to buy or not, I would say one thing:

Despite first impression MOT doesn't have a deep moat around its castle

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