{"id":332,"date":"2008-06-17T09:16:12","date_gmt":"2008-06-17T09:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/wordp\/?p=332"},"modified":"2009-12-19T23:34:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-19T23:34:00","slug":"bye-bye-moto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/?p=332","title":{"rendered":"Bye Bye Moto"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is what many Motorola Labs employees will be saying in a few days time thanks to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagobusiness.com\/cgi-bin\/news.pl?id=29800\">culling of 150 engineers<\/a> of the approx 600 total in the R&#038;D division. There will also be 180 reassignments to other divisions. There are pros and cons to this but I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s reasonable to blame one of the most creative R&#038;D departments in the telecoms industry. The reg picks up on the story <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2008\/06\/16\/motorola_cuts_labs_jobs\/\">here<\/a>. However, the reg misses a trick. The innovation from Moto R&#038;D is often way ahead of the released products but the actual products launched have often been somewhat disapointing. Niggly bugs etc. It wasn&#8217;t just the late Geoffrey Frost who brought about the RAZR models that arguably saved the company <em>(stay of execution?<\/em>.The engineering worked with the packaging to produce a quite satisfying phone. The sad thing is that Motorola could have produced the iPhone based on their R&#038;D but they haven&#8217;t. If Carl Icahn wants to put anything in place at Motorola it should be a longer term view which could yield a sustainable company rather than a vain hope of finding the next RAZR. There&#8217;s more money and value to be created in the long run from this. Don&#8217;t give someone a band-aid when they&#8217;ve just cut off their arm.<br \/>\nOf course with the closure\/sale\/reorg\/whatever of the mobile phone division in 2009 it&#8217;s hard to think long term. It&#8217;s easy to lay off staff to cut costs. It&#8217;s easier to close or sell off divisions to cut losses. However, building a successful company that knows and taps its niches requires vision, leadership and a strategy that can be articulated. Steve Jobs gave that to Apple. Motorola should take a good look at the Apple board and consider how the fruit company&#8217;s management team have consistently delivered over the past few years. Not just great financial performance but innovative and beautiful products. Consistency of software, hardware, design, packaging; functionality and elegance. Which in many ways the RAZR had.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is what many Motorola Labs employees will be saying in a few days time thanks to the culling of 150 engineers of the approx 600 total in the R&#038;D division. There will also be 180 reassignments to other divisions. There are pros and cons to this but I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s reasonable to blame one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1700],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":480,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions\/480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}