Valleywag
Pity Ed Zander, who's learning that timing is everything. The Motorola CEO today had to confess to Wall Street that his company's cell-phone sales were off again and the business was looking likely to run a loss for the year. He arrived at Motorola from Silicon Valley in January 2004, hailed as a tech visionary. As sales of the Razr took off, Fortune asked if he was "the greatest CEO in America — or simply the luckiest." Neither, it turns out. Here's where Zander went wrong.
Motorola's business, like Gaul, is divided into three parts: cell phones, networking equipment, and cable set-top boxes. In theory, that positions Motorola well for the future, since the cable companies which today buy Motorola set-tops need to upgrade their broadband networks and will one day want to sell their customers service packages that include cell-phone plans. But in practice, those are highly competitive markets with different customers, business models, and competitors. Any one of those businesses would be hard to run; together, they're a management nightmare. Zander's pedaling as fast as he can, but he still can't keep up.
But apparently, he'd rather keep his technological Roman Empire intact than let any of the provinces break off, even though private-equity buyers would be happy to take some off his hands. BusinessWeek suggests that Motorola's board may soon kick him upstairs. Zander will either have to accept a lesser role at Motorola — or a lesser company to run. Sic semper tyrannis.
Comments
You've probably researched this more than me, but I was impressed that a VERY LARGE portion of moto's revenue was generated in municipal communication systems. Certainly with homeland security grants this made a large portion of the company at some point?
@Rick: I haven't looked at MOT's finances, but I knew people selling their communication systems to municipalities, governments and companies with fleets thirty years ago and long before there were cell phones.
So, it makes sense that's still a large part of their business. After all, not only are they experts in the field, but there's probably a lot of legacy products that are being replaced, plus of course, the newfound DHS grants that you note.
Dude, your history parallels suck.
Do you know what the hell you are talking about?
@ScalaWag: Do you? Because your comments lately sure haven't been making that case for you.
Other apt Romanesque comparisons:
- Spastic hydra
- Incontinent cerebus
- Sony
@Owen Thomas: Owen, if you want to compare Motorola to Roman Empire, could you please be consistent and perhaps even historically accurate?
You say Motorola business "like Gaul is divided into 3 parts". So this means that Motorola is only Gaul, not the whole Empire. Where is Rome itself? What's up with other provinces? True, Gaul at some points in time was divided into 3 parts, but this still depends on how your count. Finally, what tyrannical thing has Ed Zander done to merit Sic semper tyrannis treatment?
So yeah, this is quite annoying for a history buff to watch!
@ScalaWag: You fascinate me.
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