Zander’s departure at Motorola.
Ed Zander’s not really out, he’s just kicked upstairs to the chairman role while MOT long-timer executive* Greg Brown takes over the CEO duties. Two quick thoughts:
- Yes, given my previous diatribes on this point, I’m pleased that the Motorola board believed that there was someone in the house — someone whose record sure looks like a future CEO’s record — to take over the reins. According to the company’s press release, Brown has “headed four different businesses at Motorola. He also led the $3.9 billion acquisition of Symbol Technologies” — on top of serving as president and COO until this promotion.
- Ed Zander came into Motorola with a stellar record compiled at Sun Microsystems and as a venture capitalist. So here’s the question: is it that Zander just didn’t have the right answers for what ails Motorola . . . or is it that Motorola is now operating in a telecom market environment so different from before that the answers aren’t there?
Time will tell how Brown does. I’ll be watching with interest.
~
* UPDATE: What with all the puffery in the press release, I misremembered Brown’s history with the company. As this post points out, he’s been with MOT only since 2003. Still, it’s better to have a medium-term insider take over the CEO reins than to have to turn to an outsider.
Category: Executives, Technology, Telecom1 Comment so far
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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