Motorola has chosen an industry veteran to take the helm of its troubled mobile-phone divison.
On Monday, the company announced that Sanjay Jha will be co-chief executive and head of the mobile-device business. Motorola said earlier this year that it will separate the mobile-device business from the rest of the company. Since the split was announced, it had been searching for someone to head up the division.
Greg Brown, who only came on board as Motorola's chief executive late last year, will act as co-chief executive. Brown will head up the company's broadband network division.
For the past 14 years, Jha has been at mobile-phone chipmaker Qualcomm, where he most recently ran the company's CDMA division. Qualcomm's chief executive, Paul Jacobs, wished him well in a press release, saying Jha had been instrumental in helping Qualcomm become "the number-one wireless semiconductor supplier".
Over the past year and a half, Motorola has lost market share and seen its stock price plummet amid heavy losses as it struggles to find a hit product to replace the Razr. Last year, it fell from the world's second-largest supplier of handsets to third.
Last week, Motorola surprised Wall Street with a small profit for the second quarter. However, the company's handset division continued to drag on earnings. Most of the gains in the second quarter came from cost cutting and from the company's internet and cable businesses. The company still managed to hang on to its market-share position, surprising many analysts who had expected number-one Nokia and number-two Samsung to pick up share.
Motorola is expected to release several new phones, including some with touchscreens, in time for this year's holiday season. The hope is that these new products can help put new life into the company's tired device lineup. With Jha at the helm of the mobile-device unit, the company can proceed with the planned split, which is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2009.
