Motorola Seeking Salvation From The Outside

Motorola CEO Greg Brown has made public the firm's search for a leader to galvanize its ailing handset business. Rather than hire from within, Brown is looking outside the organization to find the road back to profitability. Brown also said that 2008 and 2009 were going to be 'rugged.'Brown had commented last month that he was going to take personal responsibility for Motorola's handset division. Turns out spending 80% of his time focusing on it was just a bit too much. He recently made comments at a Morgan Stanley Technology Conference being held in California that he is looking intently for a new executive to lead the mobile device division and nurse it back to health.

Brown has decided that no one within the organization is up to the task, and is instead seeking out someone with broad consumer electronics experience. He said that this person will be responsible for a "product-led recovery."

That term scares me. If Brown means "product range", that's one thing. But if he thinks one or two products are going to revitalize the company, we'll just end up seeing more of the same. The major problem is that none of its recent devices has captured the hearts of users. The (original) Razr still continues to see strong sales, but that's because it is the "free" phone handed out with new phone contracts. The Razr2 has not experienced the same success. Motorola needs an entire range of strong devices (especially ones that include things like 3G and other advanced features) if it is to truly turn the company around. And that takes time.

It's typical for OEMs to spend 12 to 18 months bringing new devices and platforms to market. Things aren't going to get better next quarter, or even the back half of this year. Brown knows this. During a recent Webcast, he said, "I expect it to be particularly rugged for the remainder of 2008 and into 2009."