“Sanjay Jha, the newly-named president of Motorola Inc.’s mobile devices business, was greeted by Wall Street like a hero about to go off to war,” Therese Poletti reports for MarketWatch. “Jha is a well-known quantity to investors, having spent the last 14 years of his career at Qualcomm Inc., most recently as chief operating officer.”
“But even with those credentials, the challenge ahead of Jha and the rest of the company is daunting. Since Motorola first disclosed problems in its handset business last year, the landscape of the cell phone industry has changed significantly, thanks in large part to the debut of the game-changing iPhone from Apple Inc.,” Poletti reports.
“Jha will have to grapple with the fact that the battle for the hearts and minds of cell phone users has shifted from ultra-thin cell phones to the fast-growing smart phone market, where devices can make calls, handle e-mail, juggle schedules and surf the Web. Here, the iPhone is duking it out primarily with Research In Motion Ltd.’s Blackberry,” Poletti reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple iPhone vs. RIM’s BlackBerry (pick any model) is like an alien spaceship (pick any model) vs. a P-51. Meanwhile, Moto’s still making Sopwith Camels.
Poletti continues, explaining that there is still “internal debate inside the company over which side of the business will inherit the Motorola brand name… if Motorola is still so mired in this kind of minutia, it is unlikely that the company will be able to deliver any kind of serious threat to the iPhone or the BlackBerry anytime soon.”
Full article here.
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