Motorola Mobility shipped 250,000 Xoom media tablets in the first quarter while improving year-over-year revenue to $3 billion but taking an $81 million loss in the three months ending April 2.
Motorola Mobility, recently split off from Motorola Solutions, also shipped 4.1 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2011, the company said Thursday. In all, Motorola Mobility said it shipped 9.3 million mobile devices in the quarter, beating analyst expectations.
Motorola split into two independent public companies in January with Motorola Mobility generally considered a spin-off. Motorola Solutions—which makes bar code scanners, police radios and other products—also reported earnings Thursday and had net income of $497 million, up from $69 million in the first quarter of 2010.
The Xoom, Motorola Mobility's first media tablet, runs Google's Android 3.0 mobile operating system. It is widely considered the strongest challenger to Apple's market-dominating iPad tablet to date, but sales figures for the Xoom had previously been considered underwhelming.
But with a quarter of a million Xoom shipments, Motorola Mobility has beaten the most pessimistic analyst assessments, including an estimate just this week that Xoom sales might have been as low as 25,000 for the first quarter.
The company said Thursday that it believes it will break even in the second quarter or possibly turn a profit of up to 12 cents per share.
The company said it expects to at least break even in the second quarter but could post a profit of up to 12 cents per share, excluding items.