Motorola 8167 User Manual - Page 21
Review of Operations
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Review of Operations Communications Sector .. Sales rose 8% to $3.6 billion and orders increased 9%. Order growth in the U.S. was led by radio common carrier and federal government markets. Internationally, orders grew most rapidly in the Asia-Pacific region. Worldwide demand increased for trunked and secure voice two-way radio systems and for paging products. Operating profits were $225 million, down from $302 million in 1989. The decline was due to: • Increased research and development costs for a broad mix of emerging opportunities in radio frequency (RF) communications, as well as expansion of traditional RF products. We believe these investments will provide favorable returns. • Continued development of the radio data communications business, which promises to rapidly augment our voice and paging technologies. We intend to lead in RF data communications, just as we have led in the growing voice communications businesses. • Expansion of international distribution channels to meet the growing worldwide popularity of our products and services. We moved aggressively into new markets as their window of opportunity opened. We believe the potential, both short- and long-term, is significant. • Changes in our U.S. distribution organization, historically one of our greatest strengths. This resulted in notable changes and costs. It proved to be more disruptive, in terms of distribution efficiencies, than expected. • Certain functions in some of the sector's mix of businesses suffered shortfalls in implementation and efficiency. We missed certain performance goals, while dealing with the heightened dynamics of the overall business. We believe that these particular inadequacies have been identified and are being resolved. At the end of the year, the sector was divided into the Land Mobile Products Sector and the Paging and Telepoint Systems Group, to focus on the growth potential of wireless communications technologies in these businesses. Morton L. Topfer, formerly senior vice president and assistant general manager of the Communications Sector, was promoted to president and general manager of the new Land Mobile Products Sector, headquartered in Schaumburg, 111. Robert L. Growney, formerly senior vice president and general manager of the Radio Technologies Group in the Communications Sector, was promoted to general manager of the new Paging and Telepoint Systems Group, headquartered in Boynton Beach, Fla. Land Mobile Products The sector continued to invest heavily in technologies of the future, such as Specialized Mobile Radio (SMR) systems, wireless data communications and digital trunking. In SMRs, or shared systems, we made major progress toward completion of our new CoveragePlus™ nationwide voice and data communication and vehicle location network in the U.S. More than 500 sites were installed by the end of 1990. The system enables dispatchers to locate and communicate directly with vehicles, by voice or with data messages, anywhere in the network. We introduced the 7100™ series of compact mobile radio data terminals, which will be used on the network. In Japan, we installed our first 1.5 gigahertz (GHz) shared trunked radio system, called JSMR-II. The system includes newly developed repeaters and subscriber radios in the new frequency band. We began shipping our first 1.5 GHz mobile radio, the MG-100, and the 800 MHz MIB-5000, the world's smallest trunked mobile radios. In China, new SMR systems were put in service in Beijing and Shanghai. In Europe, a contract was awarded in Switzerland for three systems that are to become part of the country's first shared trunking network. The German Postal and Telecommunications Ministry awarded a contract for a pilot shared radio data network for the Dusseldorf, Cologne and Bonn areas. In radio data communications, ARDIS, our joint venture with IBM, became operational nationwide. By the end of the year, the radio data communications service had delivered more than 250 million messages. More than 30 customers were using ARDIS for applications such as field service, insurance claims, public safety and transportation. Motorola received a contract for KDT* hand-held radio data terminals from United Parcel Service, for use of the ARDIS network. UPS uses the terminals to support its new On Call air pickup service. The South Australia Police Department began operating a Motorola high-speed portable-based police data communications network, the largest system of its kind in the world. We introduced two modems that are compatible with data networks such as ARDIS. The RPM 840 integrated portable radio data modem is complete with standard industry interface protocols. The RPM 400i modem can be integrated into products such as laptop computers and other hand-held computing devices. We re-entered the marine VHF radiotelephone market with the introduction of the Radius* Triton II ship station radios. The Radius line of two-way radios was broadened with trunked mobiles for Canada and Latin America. The Radius distribution network was expanded with the addition of resellers in France and Germany, and with shipments to Romania and Yugoslavia. Paging and Telepoint Systems Motorola entered the market for advanced secondgeneration digital cordless telephones known as CT-2. This technology provides users low-cost cordless personal telephones that can be used in the office, at home, or outside these areas through base stations known as telepoints. They provide limited-range access to the public switched telephone network. We introduced a full line of CT-2 infrastructure and subscriber equipment and began initial shipments to 19