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Will Motorola Rise From the Ashes?
An anonymous reader writes "According to ZDNET the once almighty Motorola is going to split into two companies, 'If the split goes through as planned, what will remain will be the "broadband and mobility solutions" business, which includes enterprise mobility, government and public safety, and Motorola's home and networks divisions.' Engadget claims to have an insider's email that details where it all went wrong, paying particular attention to mismanagement at the highest levels. What makes all of this even more of a shame though is that Motorola's latest product lineup seems to be receiving critical acclaim but with the company in so much termoil, will it ever rise out of the ashes?"
Their company may turn around like HP did(please see the 10-year chart for the whole picture) after they boot the incompetent upper management like HP booted Carly Fiorina(note: she ran HP from 1999-2005 and oversaw the HP/Compaq merger, among "other things").
On the other hand, it may be interesting to see what would happen if Motorola split "for real" just as Agilent split from HP.
It's yet another classic case of a complete lack of management and leadership, way too much politics and a complete lack of understanding of what products they're selling and how they're produced. The products were actually there, and the people (one who sadly passed away), to achieve success were there, but it's been squandered. They're not the first, and they won't be the last. The management and executives at Motorola are, and were, incompetent losers, and that's the label they carry and the price that they pay for those golden parachutes.
Desperate measures such as the breaking up of a business is always a big indication that no one has a clue what to do and that people who don't understand what the business does have taken over.
Yup. I can personally attest to that. At the last company, the CEO was forced out due to backdating shenanigans (i.e., the stock game that all tech companies in Silicon Valley played). The guy who took over promised at every meeting that he was prepared to take it to the next level, that we were going to kick everyone's butt, etc. Within one year, the company had been sold, and he probably took a 10million+ golden parachute into retirement (the company hadn't even gotten to $1billion in yearly sales) - all for having performed exactly one job; selling the company to someone else. Not only that, but the price for the company had been boosted by financial games with revenue recognition that looked great on paper for the next quarter, but which absolutely wrecked long-term sales. 2 years after takeover, we're finally recovering from the idiocy. It's only because we are the unquestioned leaders in a red-hot market that the company didn't just completely tank right after the sale.
Since then, I've had a very dim view of CEOs and the games they play. I've gotten to the point where I think that a number of companies succeed in spite of their CEOs, not because. Not only that, but the only time that CEOs are held accountable is if they've done something criminal. Being merely incompetent and raiding corporate coffers is enough to get awarded an 8 to 9 figure severance package. Personally, I compare it to someone joining a WoW guild, raiding the Guild bank for everything that's worth anything, and then being handed everyone's gold as an incentive to leave the guild. Despicable doesn't even come close to describing what I think of thse CEOs.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Last figures I saw showed that the US mobile phone market was around 7% of the global mobile market. That's barely even significant, and considering how hostile it is to hardware manufacturers it's probably one I wouldn't bother competing in. It's not even as if it's worth it for the marketing - no one buys a phone because it's popular in the USA.
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Seriously, Motorola would be trivial to turn around. I could manage it in a fraction of the time it would take most executives to, and I'm cheap at the price. So could many geeks who have a similarly broad-based background and no patience with waffling. (Waffling should be left to waffle irons.)
Of course, no geek capable of running Motorola will ever be offered the job. We're far too outspoken, way too radical, most (myself included) have never been contaminated with a Harvard business degree, and most (again myself included) have managed to avoid managerial roles because we can't stand having zombies as co-workers. (Holy water supersoakers aren't enough.
Motorola won't hire anyone dangerous enough to succeed. And this is a mission where you need someone who is dangerous, a wildcard, unpredictable. You don't hire a banker to pull off a commando raid, you don't hire a businessman to rescue a disintegrating corporate giant. If they had any sense, they'd be looking for a troublemaker. They WANT Motorola to cause trouble. Causing trouble means they're still breathing. This troublemaker must be able to come up with novel, irrational, but totally brilliant solutions to the current engineering problems. Only problem is, The Doctor doesn't like being pinned down like that.
There is one other option, which has a better chance of success. Start a new company, a company that, businesswise, should logically not exist, that makes no sense given current attitudes, but sells like nothing else. Then openly and outright offer each and every (decent) engineer at Motorola the option of jumping ship. Don't buy the IP, buy the workforce. What's Motorola going to do? Sue each person individually over non-compete? And will the courts even listen to such a case if Motorola isn't producing anything worth a damn to compete with? Yes, it's playing with fire, but look at every single brilliant engineer, every single brilliant company owner, anyone who has ever truly risen far enough above the masses to see anything worthwhile - they all played with fire, in the most insane and dangerous ways possible. And they made it work for them.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It's not just American CEOs. I work at a somewhat-American semiconductor company (has locations in USA, Israel, India, Romania, and other places), and our French CEO just left with a huge golden parachute after mismanaging us.
The company I worked with at the time was a competitor of Motorola in the cellular handset market, and so we reviled them for their chutzpah in patenting RF power control and modulation schemes, but their micros and their automotive power semiconductors were awesome back in the day.
Less is more.
I work with mobile phones by profession, and can tell you this isn't true.
What is NOT crippled, with rare exceptions:
- Any phone that supports SD cards will allow the user to use anything except applications and themes from that SD card. My personal Motorola phone's ringtone resides on an SD card.
- USB cables are another backdoor, and many manufacturers put the enabling software on their website. You can also get USB+software combos from Radio Shack for $20 for virtually any device. Some carriers provide roughly the same software/cables for a bit more. (d'oh...)
- None of the J2ME devices block web installation of unsigned apps. (* see below for exceptions)
What IS crippled, depending on the carrier:
- Some carriers prevent installing unsigned network apps, and make unsigned HTTP apps a pain to use. (i.e. Google Maps)
- Themes, which are a bit more complex than simple single files like PNG's and mp3's.
- BREW devices don't let users install their own apps.
I'm not defending these practices, just putting them in perspective.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
Wow, you really need a better plan. I pay a flat rate for unlimited data, and I can put whatever wallpaper I want on my phone, myself, for free. Same with ringtones. It's basically like a little PC, and yes it's a Motorola (the Q to be exact).
While there is some truth to the tired meme you're promulgating, it's not all as gloomy as your trolling makes it sound.
Your example proves the point. RIM is a Canadian company and T-Mobile's parent company is German.
Another example regarding abstration. I'm an industrial engineer" myself. My profession would never exist if business systems could not be abstracted. There are operations research problems in auto manufacturing as well as retail. I used to do a lot of Monte Carlo simulation which I can and have used to solve problems in both manufacturing and finance. All the programming I've done I can use in any number of fields. A lot of skills are transferable between industries. Why should management be any different?
Nokia having more sales than the other handset manufacturers can be attributed to many things including economies of scale in component buying, manufacturing, sales, research and development etc.. However it should be remembered that Nokia hasn't always been the biggest mobile phone manufacturer. When we start to examine on how they achieved their position as the number one and how they have retained it, I would strongly look on how Nokia plays with phone variations.
I myself think that having large number of phone variations is the reason for Nokia's success. It isn't even an secret, but more as publicly known fact. They have been doing variation game for long. In the end of 90s I can remember in example the case with Nokia 5110 (98) and 6110 (97): they were the same phone, 6110 just had extra memory, business look, calendaring and some other software functions configured on, you actually could switch those software options on from 5110. After those days Nokia has just gone bigger and better at making variations. As I said earlier N95, N95 8GB, N96 are N82 the same phone, same too with E50, E60 and E61. They make a one phone and then implement various number of variations with different components and forms, it's just the same as in the PC industry.
The key point in making lots of different variations is that anticipating what consumers really want is very hard, and even if can understand what customers want and need, it still doesn't mean that they will buy it, as there are so many variables and in the end consumers behave many times irrationally. To me it seems as a better tactic to design many variations from a particular handset platform and throw a number of phones to consumer and hope that he or she will pick one. By having large number of variations in function, in components, in form and etc.. a company can make sure that it has always some model covering a specific feature/form/price point thus serving the needs of consumers better. It even doesn't cost that much for company to differentiate, like I said Nokia basically has S30, S40 and S60 software lines, the same software shares usually shares more or less the same components with other phones in the line, so in reality there are few phone platforms onto witch different mobile phone variations are build. So having a large collection of seemingly different phones doesn't necessarily mean that they waste lot of time with them or that they really are different.
And yes, I enjoy going to a phone shop and testing phones personally. My phone is my personal companion that I use daily for my life and work, it also represents who I'm and what message I want to give people, so testing the phone personally gives me the feeling do I really want it or not. I don't know how it is in the US, if you are from there, but in here the phone models that are on the shop and that can be tested are also usually available, if not they come in few days, and you reserve or buy one from the next shipment in that case. Everybody does the same, even if they order it from the net, they still usually feel it themselves in a shop.
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