Engadget has posted an open letter from former Motorala advisor Numair Faraz to CEO Greg Brown.
Regarding Ed Zander, former Motorola CEO, and Geoffrey Frost, Motorola Chief Marketing Officer, who was responsible for the original RAZR:
After the success of the RAZR, while Geoffrey was tied up every which way in ROKR development, meetings, criscrossing travel, and so on, through his associates I implored the company to beef up their software expertise, and focus on creating socially networked devices (this was in the years before MySpace and Facebook became the juggernauts they are today). Your predecessor, Ed Zander, had little interest in this, and instead insisted on parlaying his relationship with Steve Jobs into the ill-fated ROKR effort in order to prop up Motorola’s stock price.
MacDailyNews Take: Boy, Jobs sure played that moron Zander by having Motorola screw around with that piece of crap while Apple was concurrently developing a secret little project called “iPhone.”
Zander, who seemed to care more about his golf score than running one of America’s greatest technology companies, left all of the hard work to Geoffrey; I’ve always considered it Motorola’s dirty little secret that the strategy for their entire profit machine was run by the company’s CMO — not the rest of the company’s executives, who are as inept now as they have ever been.
Many close to Geoffrey believed Ed Zander worked him to death, putting the pressure of the fate of the company in his hands. I took his untimely death in 2005 very hard, and knew that the company would head downhill in the aftermath. On a personal note, Lynne, his wife blamed the company for his passing. She committed suicide soon after.
Full article — very highly recommended — here.
May 10, 2007: Motorola Chairman (until May) and then-CEO Ed Zander said his company was ready for competition from Apple’s iPhone, due out the following month. “How do you deal with that?” Zander was asked at the Software 2007 conference Wednesday in Santa Clara, Calif. Zander quickly retorted, “How do they deal with us?” – IDG News Service
“After the success of the RAZR, while Geoffrey was tied up every which way in ROKR development, meetings, criscrossing travel, and so on, through his associates I implored the company to beef up their software expertise . . .”
LOLR
Holy crap. I posted that before I read the rest of the story. That’s really sad.
You want a scary read on Motorola’s other hardware ventures. I suggest the following. (It doesn’t do any favors for Rudi Giuliani either.)
http://radiosilencefdny.com/
Sad about his death and his wife’s suicide. I’d never heard about that before this.
Ed Zander has blood on his golfclubs.
I am happy that the story made it to the media. If Ed Zander really was such an inept CEO everyone needs to know. I have worked with many inept CEOs and have always wondererd how they managed to keep their secret.
Deep, deep problems. This is the result of bad management. Successful companies often can coast along, spending the cash they make from a few successes here and there, but at some point, if they don’t change with those changing around them, bad management always kills the company.
Microsoft anyone? It’ll take a lot longer because M$ has so much more cash, but they also have enormous expenditures and plan to make more.
Wow, things can change fast.
“Microsoft anyone?”
Except that Ballmer has stacks of freeze dried employees stashed away to snack on like jerky to sustain his monstrous frame for many months. And towels. He has lots and lots of towels.
Unfortunately Many US Companies have CEO’s with this exemplary management style (if you can so loosely describe it as such). The stockholders hold the culpability; they pay these guys too much. They need to let the CEO’s down from the gas clouds that insulate them from “common folk” –who are their customers– so as they, at least, have an opportunity to relate. CEO’s tend to beat to death any underling who genuinely has the progress and vitality of the company in heart, mind and endeavor. Golf indeed, pathetic and profoundly sad, yet so prevalent. As an Apple user i am very thankful for SJ.
Using a RAZR practically drove me into the arms of the iPhone.
Never has the user experience of two similar products been so night and day.
I wouldn’t exactly call the RAZR and the iPhone “similar products”. They aren’t even targeting the same market really, unless you mean they just both look cool. I have a RAZR and an iPod touch, and I don’t really have any interest in getting an iPhone if/when it’s finally available in Canada. The RAZR is fine as a phone and my iPod touch can do everything else (I wouldn’t use it to connect to edge or 3G networks anyways since data plan rates in Canada are atrocious).
Having worked for Zander at another company (Sun) let me just say that Motorola’s current circumstances rest entirely on his shoulders. Rarely has someone gotten so rich through complete failure as he has. . .
I’ve thought for some time that Motorola’s story was tragic, just as the destruction of Palm is tragic for American technology. I had no idea Motorola’s failure was based on human tragedy at the root level. I’m sorry for Mr. Frost and his wife, and their family.
That’s what happens when you have a weak Board of Directors under the spell of a CEO. Every Board needs a spanker… maybe it should’ve been Icahn. Tragic indeed, but I wonder how many companies are in this situation. And how many executives really prop up and drive a corporation forward only to end up marginalized and unrecognized.
Bad things happen when you’re led bythe clueless. Now let’s see what happens in this election year. One weakness of democracy is that when the press fail to do their job, clueless voters get to choose their leader. Good luck!
It’s the same story with Palm. The incompetent are kept in power while the truly talented leave (where possible).
It’s not so much that the bosses are stupid and the engineers are smart (although all the geeks would like you to think that). It’s that there are talented middle management who are never promoted to the top ranks, or only the loudest and most arrogant ones are.
Sing along with me, Ballmer:
“Ape call, doodlyabba
Ape call, doodlyabba,
If you wanna be hip man, go ape!”
I wonder who he is working for now. Quite the letter.
the 360 looks like it’s gonna take a fair chunk of ms’ dough
the words total disaster don’t do the rrod pos justice
Just looked at Zander’s page on Wikipedia and discovered he’s ex-Data General: a company that designed and made great products – many thanks to Tom West and the people he inspired – undone by sales and marketing management that would have difficulty walking and chewing gum simultaneously.
Once you know that fact, nearly everything else barely comes as a surprise.
More evidence of fish rotting from the head down in corrupt corporate America. Motorola deserves what it’s getting. It’s sad that the non-management employees have to suffer because of the arrogance and incompetence of the executives.
Tragically, I see Motorola closing down within a few years.
The fact that they are a technology company that has a CEO that doesnt even use a computer is unbelievable.
That alone indicates that the company is so out of touch its beyond any logical thought.
How on earth can a modern technology based business be run with any sort of competence by a CEO who cant even use email???
Having used Moto products in every arena from landmobile radio through Bluetooth headsets and cellphones, I can say one thing categorically:
Motorola has no idea how to build a reasonable user interface for its products.
This, more than anything else, spells the doom of the company for me.
Sell them short.
MW: hope, as in “There ain’t none.”