How the Destinies of Motorola and Palm Grew Apart For much of this decade, the fates of Palm and Motorola DVD Ripperwere intertwined. Both GPS tracker were early innovators in the mobile phone industry, but neither had had a hit in years.

Motorola, which had invented cellphones and found great success with the Razr, and Palm, which pioneered the hand-held computer category, watched more nimble competitors lure away consumers with flashier, sleeker and more functional smartphones.

But their paths have now sharply diverged.

On Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard, the PC giant, announced it would buy the loss-ridden Palm and use its technology across a range of H.P. devices. On Thursday, the similarly loss-ridden Motorola, however, GPS tracker announced it made an unexpected profit during its first quarter, beating Wall Street expectations.

The reason for the different outcomes, in a word, may be Android, Google’s operating system for mobile devices. “Motorola did quite well by jumping on Android’s bandwagon,” said Roger Entner, a mobile analyst with Nielsen. “Whereas Palm went the route of having their own operating system and launching that with Sprint, right against the iPhone.”

“Last year, we weren’t shipping any smartphones,” Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s co-chief executive, said in an interview. “Our brand is recovering very well.”

Mr. Jha said Motorola shipped 2.3 million smartphones in the quarter and that the company expected to ship 12 million to 14 million handsets by year-end. The Schaumberg, Ill., technology company reported net income of $69 million, or 3 cents a share, compared with a loss of $231 million, or 13 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue of $5 billion for the first quarter was 6 percent less than the year-ago quarter, but the smallest decline in three years.

For the last two years the company has been working to reverse its fortunes by designing a product that catches the attention of consumers. As sales of the Razr dropped sharply by 2006, it learned that consumers were fickle and the cellphone business was as susceptible to tidal trends asDVD Ripper the fashion industry. What’s GPS tracker in vogue one moment can be outdated the next.