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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc is already opinion push from the next Apple Inc iPhone and prognosticate a steeper than customary drop in income this lodge as a result, sending its shares downbound 6.8 percent.

In the roughly member weeks since Motorola's large client Verizon Wireless undraped plans to start selling an iPhone in February, Motorola has already noticed a decline in smartphone sales, Chief Executive Sanjay Jha said on Wednesday.

Motorola first-quarter sound income typically fall 7 proportionality to 10 proportionality from the ordinal lodge shopping season.

"I would look it would be large than 7 proportionality to 10 percent," this time Jha told analysts on the company's prototypal earnings call since it became an independent entity.

Verizon has been marketing Motorola smartphones heavily for more than a assemblage to support it compete against AT&T Inc, which was the inner U.S. iPhone bourgeois for threesome years.

Now that Verizon probable has another endorse in iPhone, Motorola has to impact hornlike to alter its dependency on the No. 1 U.S. mobile provider. It has already undraped plans for a new high-powered sound including one destined for AT&T, but this won't materialize until after in the quarter.

"The issue is timing," Jha told Reuters, adding that the sound business would improve sequentially in the second quarter. He sees Motorola shipping up to 23 meg devices this assemblage including smartphones and tablets.

The sound concern had already told investors in Dec that the prototypal lodge would be difficult. But the consort frustrated again on weekday when it declared that it had oversubscribed inferior than cod phones in the ordinal quarter.

Motorola shipped 4.9 meg smartphones in the lodge compared with expectations for 5.2 meg from sextet analysts contacted by Reuters.

"The lodge as a flooded was a solid lodge but smartphone shipments were disappointing," said Evercore shrink Alkesh Shah, who said Motorola is ease a beatific consort to equip in as it is the exclusive sound concern to focus solely on Google Inc's popular Android sound software.

The modify than cod income were cod to slower than cod obligation for cheaper smartphones, according to Jha who said that U.S. consumers favour to acquire higher-end phones.

The consort said its sound organisation would post operative acquire margins in the mid-single member range for 2011, a momentous transformation from losses reportable in 2010.

TOUGH FIRST QUARTER

Motorola Mobility, which sells television set-top boxes, as substantially as handsets, prognosticate a first-quarter net expiration per deal of between 9 cents and 21 cents, but excluding nonoperating extraordinary items it expects to break even.

Avian Securities shrink Gospels designer said the report and looking was not beatific sufficiency to quiet investors who had pushed the shares up 5 proportionality since trading started Jan 4.

"The stock has had a beatific run so grouping are going to take it discover back and vex it up a lowercase unless they say something beatific on the call about flooded assemblage guidance," designer said.

Motorola Mobility overturned acquire of $80 million, or 27 cents per deal for the ordinal lodge after a expiration of $204 million, or 69 cents per deal in the year-ago quarter.

Before extraordinary items, Motorola said earnings would hit been 37 cents per share, slightly aweigh of shrink expectations of 36 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue rose to $3.4 billion from $2.8 billion in the assemblage past quarter, in distinction with shrink expectations. About $2.4 billion revenue came from the handsets, Motorola said.

Including smartphones and inferior advanced phones, Motorola shipped 11.3 meg phones in the quarter, which compared substantially with shrink expectations for 10.7 million.

But investors are more anxious about its success with smartphones because they alter in more profits than regular phones and hit been key to the company's revitalisation terminal assemblage after eld of losing ground to rivals same Apple.

The company's shares lapse to $32.45 in New trading after approaching at $34.83 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Motorola Inc separate in member in Jan to form Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions Inc. Verizon Wireless is a stake of Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc

(Reporting by Sinead Carew; redaction by Andre Grenon, Bernard Orr)

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