Mobile devices Toolkit

Story: Motorola may spin off mobile-phone unit

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So Much Confusion Over The Blindingly Obvious.

Lets get this a bit right. Motorola has had many successfull phones, Starting with the big 80's Grey Brick and then the Star TAC flip phones, and probably will again. It also has many other substantial global businesses in vehicle electronics, cellular network transmission equipment and handsets, military and public sector electronics all of which have totally different business models from development to sales than Mobile with its fashion led fast track development consumer marketing and distribution arms length model.

To split the two and run them decentralised under a common brand but totally different business models is obvious, running them as an integrated whole under the same structures and processes is and was stupid. Ed Zander had functional reporting lines all the way to the main board around divisional leaders and a top down common and stifling management process which was not optimised for each part of the business.

What Greg Brown is doing is clearly a more rational and targeted way to manage Motorola which has, or had, huge skills and history in creating electronic products. I wish him luck for the sake of the employees who have had to put up with the former management processes and the way the consumer mobile tail has wagged the financial tail of what could have been an otherwise much more successful electronics business dog. I expect the Mobile business will also be more successful if not burdened with processes which are appropriate to the longer time frame developments of government and enterprise business?

Brian Catt

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