zander on SWiK

Motorola C-Suite & The Ex-Factor

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 06:49:05 -0800

The recent executive shuffle at Motorola (MOT) - Ed Zander out, Gregory Brown in - prompted a visit to their press release archives, and what I learnt: there is a constant exodus of senior management. Some leave because they don’t get the top job (CEO) and others are asked to leave because they can’t do the job. Whichever way you look at it - this constant shuffling is a sign of a deeply troubled company, that needs to make some tough strategic decisions about its future.

Here is a short list of those who have come and gone in past five years.

July 27, 2002: President Ed Breen leaves to join Tyco.
September 22, 2003: Christopher Galvin, CEO and Chairman is nudged out by the board.
January 2004: Ed Zander is named CEO.
January 13, 2005: Mike S. Zafirovski, Motorola’s president and chief operating officer, tipped to get the CEO job resigns and is soon named CEO of Nortel.
February 19, 2007: Ron Garriques, a key executive incharge of mobile phone division leaves for Dell.
December 1, 2007: Gregory Brown, COO of Motorola to replace Ed Zander as CEO.
December 3, 2007: CTO Padmasree Warrior resigns from the company.

Photo by Katie Fehrenbacher/GigaOm via Flickr.

Camera Lights (No) Action… Moto

Tue, 15 May 2007 06:10:37 -0700

Update: Moto’s superbrilliant answer to the RAZR? Uh, another RAZR . . . RAZR 2. Jesus. Wonder how long were they working on that followup — a lot longer than the 5 seconds we spent when we jokingly referred to a RAZR 2.0 in the morning post. Though, it does have some nice features. The “media monster” is also the Z8. Exhale sigh of disappointment.

From earlier: Motorola’s CEO Ed Zander is set to show off new cell phones on Tuesday, likely including the “media monster” that he briefly mentioned last week. Do they need an iPhone killer, a RAZR 2.0, or just a compelling mobile device? We’d pencil in ‘D’ for all of the above.

One of the devices will likely be a movie-playing — 30-frames per second — device with removable storage cards which can hold feature length films. Om and I met with Motorola CTO Padmasree Warrior last week and she said the company had been in Hollywood the week before striking deals with movie studios like Universal (more interview details from Om later on).

Placing a bet on feature-length films and long form mobile video content, seems like a pretty clear shot at Apple’s iPhone and iPod franchise, as well as Nokia’s recent emphasis on the high-end multi media converged mobile device. But how can a recently beleagured Moto top the iPhone buzz — even Roy is planning on getting one.

Even worse for Moto, Nokia said yesterday that its market share will rise in the second quarter, pushing its stock up, and widening the gap between the two. And by now everyone’s heard the Carl Icahn (failed for now) saga and Ed Zander’s struggles.

Barron’s even wonders if Nortel’s CEO (and former contender for Moto CEO) Mike Zafirovski would have been a better fit to fight this battle. Ouch. Listen to Zander himself at 10AM eastern for the company’s ‘big’ announcement.

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And Time Warner wanted to sell its cable business

Wed, 02 May 2007 14:50:16 -0700

Sometime last month, WSJ ran an article about Time Warner wanting to spin off their cable business (Time Warner Cable) as a separate company, and instead focus on the content part of the business. Terrible idea, and hopefully the management realized that after its own first quarterly earnings report.

Quick rundown.

Filmed entertainment, that falls under the purview of Jeff Bewkes, the heir apparent to Time Warner, saw revenues decline one percent to $2.743 billion, and saw earnings decline 27% to $332 million. With DVD sales going to hell, that division is going to get hurt even more.

Cable business (that includes broadband and digital voice) saw revenues increase 61% to $3.851 billion (vs 1Q 2006) and profits zoom 54% to $1.307 billion. Of the $3.851 billion in sales, $971 million came from (Adelphia) acquired systems, and another $212 million from consolidation of Kansas City Pool.

Another bastard child of the dysfunctional content conglomerate, AOL saw earnings go up 27% to $542 million, even if revenues declined 25% to $1.458 billion. (This can’t last - can it?)

Hey Carl, stop heckling Ed Zander. Try your luck again with Time Warner.

Key broadband stats:

Residential high-speed data subscriber net additions reached 356,000 in the first quarter taking the total to 7.0 million.
Digital Phone subscriber net additions were 234,000 in the first quarter taking the total to 2.1 million.

Disclosure: I write a column for Business 2.0, a magazine owned by Time Warner.

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And A GigaMornin’ To You

Wed, 02 May 2007 04:49:55 -0700

The Battle of the Boroughs: Queens-born Carl Ichan got in Ed Zander’s face. Brooklyn born Motorola CEO is firing back. In a letter filed with SEC he fires back, and says Moto doesn’t need Icahn.
Cablevision family wants it back: The Dolans want to take Cablevision private and will pay $10.5 billion for it. With debt the deal is worth $23 billion.
Narad flexes if PhyFlex: Changes name, if not game. Now will call itself PhyFlex Networks
Qwest, the small and svelte Bell: Cost cutting and tight op-ex controls boosts net profit to $240 million in the first quarter.
Truphone to Vodafone: don’t mess with us aka block our VoIP or we will sue. Now lawsuits are cheaper than a big ad campaign.

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As the Moto turns

Tue, 01 May 2007 12:50:48 -0700

As a kid my after-school sitter was the outlandish and catty plotlines of daytime soaps — Days of Our Lives, As the World Turns, and the like (latchkey kids unite). Now after reading the latest on Motorola’s fall from grace and recent anti-Zander comments from Carl Icahn, the plotline of the handset maker’s struggles is straight off a catfight-filled soap opera copy desk. Maybe Moto CEO Ed Zander will be replaced next season by a long-lost twin who’s actually a cyborg.

In a full page page ad in the Wall Street Journal Carl Icahn calls Motorola “troubled” and says it has “stumbled badly” — all part of Icahn’s plan to capture a Moto board seat. In the letter Icahn also attacks a reported comment from Ed Zander that he loves his job, but hates his carrier customers, and calls Zander’s comment “something straight out of Alice in Wonderland.”

Activist investor Icahn is no stranger to controversy, but increasingly Zander is being painted more like the Mad Hatter. To a large extent by mad investors, that is. The Wall Street Journal posted a long piece about Zander’s role in Moto’s decline this weekend. The gist is that under Zander’s lead Motorola’s relied on the success of the RAZR for far too long and left itself hanging with no followup act. Nothing that is suprising to our readers.

The article chronicles the Motorola employees that left as Zander led the ship astray, like Ron Garriques and Mike Zafirovski. now CEO of Nortel. The talk in Silicon Valley is that Zander received a lot of unwarranted praise for his role in promoting the RAZR, and his lack of product vision is only now being demonstrated after the shine of the RAZR has worn off.

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Moto still tripping over phones

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 10:59:57 -0700

Motorola CEO Ed Zander has been calling the company’s handset results “unacceptable,” with a pledge to improve performance. But it looks like it’s going to take several quarters to try to fix the problem. The company posted first quarter sales of $9.43 billion - close to its previous forecast — but lower than the first quarter of 2006, and a net loss of $181 million.

Moto’s wings got clipped by the handset business. Motorola’s mobile devices division brought in $5.4 billion in sales, down 15 percent compared with the year-ago quarter, and an operating loss of $231 million, compared with operating earnings of $701 million in the year-ago quarter. Blame it on the profitless prosperity of cheap phones, and over reliance on the RAZR.

Mark Sue from RBC says:

It’s got to stop getting worse before it gets better and we’re looking for another bumpy ride in 2Q as channel inventories clear and Motorola adjusts its mobile devices business model.

Motorola says it expects a “gradual recovery” in the mobile devices division starting in the second half and expects to be profitable for the full year.

Not that we are surprised at the results - Motorola does okay for a couple of quarters, press applauds and then the sky falls. Its like an iPod set on repeat-playback mode.

Seeking Alpha points out: “the company managed to end the quarter with higher inventory than when it began. That, in turn, sounds like a recipe for further discounting and more trouble for the entire wireless sector.” True dat.

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RAZR cuts are deep for Moto

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 16:50:00 -0700

Motorola needs to get someone to write a book about them, outlining their successes and their mistakes. And devote an entire chapter on why they shouldn’t rely on a single product too much. Remember the Startec? Well that phone sold like mad, and then suddenly it didn’t and Motorola stock swooned.

History is repeating itself with RAZR, which has been milked to death, and the sales have just nose-dived, which is why the company is reporting losses and is bracing for dismal times ahead.

Motorola is now lowering its sales from previously announced (January 2007) estimates of between $10.4 billion and $10.6 billion to the $9.2 billion to $9.3 billion range in the first quarter of 2007. Losses, oh yeah, they got those too. They say, they are shifting focus to beefing up margins, which despite everything that has transpired makes me believe that they will be a bidder for Palm.

“This is a fast business, very fast,” said Ed Zander, Motorola’s chief executive officer, told the Wall Street Journal. “And we just didn’t react fast enough.”

“Motorola is trying to move away from the price game for market share, but the product portfolio at the moment is lacking in the high-end and the low-end,” writes RBC Capital Markets analyst, Mark Sue. You can say that again Mark!

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