Motorola Eyes Solid Public Safety Growth, Teams with Ericsson
The public-safety sector remains resilient despite state budget problems, Motorola Co-CEO Greg Brown said at Citigroup’s technology conference Tuesday. Meanwhile, the manufacturer is teaming up with Ericsson to create a unified public safety platform that will enable real-time information-sharing between command centers and remote devices, the company said.
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Public safety and government business have continued to go “reasonably well,” Brown said. That’s largely because of a high priority for public safety and federal grants to public safety, he said, pointing to a San Francisco coalition’s having received a broadband stimulus grant to help pay for a 700 MHz public safety network. Even under tough state budgets, public safety is often “prioritized as the top of the food chain for spending,” he said. And every year, customers refresh and upgrade their technology.
LTE offers Motorola new opportunities in public safety, Brown said. The LTE broadband standard cover data only, he said. Motorola specializes in narrow-band push-to-talk, mission-critical voice, he noted. It’s crucial that networks interoperate seamlessly with the legacy system, he said.
Under the deal with Ericsson, Motorola will provide devices, video security and command and control solutions for first responders. Ericsson will provide LTE equipment -- including packet core and related services -- and combine that with Motorola Solutions’ public safety-optimized LTE core. The financial details weren’t disclosed. “LTE enables a number of new applications and video communication from the site of accident to the communication central,” said Ulf Ewaldsson, an Ericsson vice president.
Motorola expects its enterprise unit to produce operating profit margins of 15-16 percent in 2011, the same as projected for 2010, Brown said. He reaffirmed Motorola’s announced target for 2010 revenue growth in the mid-single-digit percentages for the unit, which is being separated from the rest of the company in Q1 of 2011. Brown will head the new entity, Motorola Solutions. Co-CEO Sanjay Jha will run the mobile devices business.