This has been a while in the making: MOTOCEO Ed ZNDR is out as Motorola CEO come January 1, and will be replaced by the company’s president. ZNDR’s legacy is undoubtedly the RAZR: a huge-selling handset, but one the company couldn’t follow up with another smash hit.
Motorola’s corporate history over the last several years has really been a roller-coaster ride, with the RAZR being a more recent reincarnation of the StarTAC. But Motorola’s still shown few signs that they’ve really started to turn things around by rolling out a portfolio of solid, attractive handsets, rather than yet another RAZR update. The Z8, which didn’t get many great reviews, showed that somewhere within the company, somebody’s trying to make better handsets that have the wow factor. Perhaps Moto’s new stake in UIQ signals that there’s some more (and better) where that came from.
Update: Apparently Moto’s CEO, Padmasree Warrior, is out as well.
Ed Zander inherited a very troubled Motorola, and lest us forget he reinvigorated communications and opened doors for innovation. Several new products were introduced in all Motorola businesses, and the company remains at the forefront of 2-way radios in almost all markets as well as DVRs. The company beat Apple to market with the ROKR and several other products. Unfortunately, not enough emphasis was placed on growing revenues from these innovations, and discussion devolved to talking about cell phone market share - a not-too-interesting topic. Read more at http://www.ThePhoenixPrinciple.com