NEW YORK (Reuters) - Motorola Inc posted a quarterly profit versus a year-earlier loss as it sold more smartphones than Wall Street estimated even as overall phone sales declined faster than expected.
The company's shares rose 3.2 percent after it posted a first quarter profit of $69 million, or 3 cents per share compared with a loss of $231 million or 10 cents a share in the same quarter the year before.
Revenue fell to $5.04 billion from $5.37 billion the year before and compared with average expectations for $5.098 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Motorola, which is reorganizing the entire business around smartphones based on Google Inc
But the company said its sales of smartphones rose to 2.3 million from 2 million in the fourth quarter, when it was helped by its Droid phone, which is sold at Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications
(Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Derek Caney)
