While this is disgusting, it is unfortunately not unusual. IBM in the late '80s early '90s was much the same. Micro-channel PCs and token-ring cards come to mind. Inflated estimates of the mainframe market is another.
In the 1970's, a lowly co-op student (me) asked the President of Oldsmobile Division, why GM wasn't building a 280Z or RX-7. His reply was "There is no market" and added that it was too much trouble for GM to go after a market of only 40K cars.
At this point in time Olds was having a banner year, breaking one million units/year for the first time. Just read any financial news these days and you will find stories of hubris. This type of story isn't new, just increasingly common.
I see this not as a problem of organization or egos. It usually comes down to greed, where the desire to increase one's wealth beyond any level that could be described as comfortable, to one that approaches obscene.

dfwguy

I am now officially glad that I didn't take up one exec's offer of a job in the Moto mobile division.
Unfortunately, I ended up in a similar situation, although in another business sector.
I just quit a few weeks ago, preferring not to be here when it all comes crashing down.

Hvedhrungr

Instead of telling you my experiences while working at Motorola, I'll tell you this defining experience while interviewing. They brought in large numbers to do dozens of interviews at many divisions. It was almost all cell phones, cell phones, cell phones. I finally asked somewhere where I could interview for one of the radio groups. They just looked at me confused and asked in all seriousness, "We make radios??"

Ignoring the existence of your core products is never a good idea, especially when putting all your eggs in a commodity basket.

jwardell

This is what happens when you let people with really good educations, ton's of degrees, and no creativity and innovation run your company.

Joseph

surprised we havent seen an official letter from moto addressing these concerns.

G_Money

@Joseph: Yeah but do you work at Moto? and is your job to hire others into your company?! lol that's what's pathetic about that one...

xthemusicmanx

@jwardell: I actually didn't know that Moto made radios until I saw a football game a few years back where the coach had one of the radio headsets with the big motorola M on the side.

Joseph

@TheCyberBob:

LMAO. That was slick!

Motorola! Your capacity to innovate the future and your failure to do so is breaking my heart.

Innovate or die!...Quickly!

thegadgeteer

@jwardell: I didn't even know they made radios. Neat.

As a side note I went to the Motorola site to check out these radios. Here's the link to their iRadio: [broadband.motorola.com]

which I got from here:
[www.motorola.com]
(bottom left link)

It appears that the execs there aren't the only things that are broken.

TheCyberBob

This is going back a few years but I worked as a contractor in Motorola facility writing GSM network management software. I was there for three years and it was a pretty depressing cubicle land with stupid "empowering" posters and meaningless acronyms plastered around the place.

I remember one email that was sent from some brainless exec berating people for using non-Motorola mobiles. I felt like replying that if he'd ever used another non-Moto handset the answer why people chose them would be obvious. Motorola phones were almost unusable at the time and had something like 5 buttons more buttons than a Nokia phone.

These days things are slightly better, for example the phone software is actually usable and fairly intuitive but the phones are still woefully underpowered and expensive compared to other brands. Virtually any model from Samsung, Nokia or Sony Ericsson is more usable and has more features than its Motorola counterpart.

My feeling is that things haven't changed much since when I was there. Maybe the same dumb exec who couldn't figure it out back then is responsible for the mess that has become of Motorola since.

As a postscript, the place I worked at got shut down a last year with 350 redundancies. You suck Motorola.

DrXym

Wow, Scott Adams could have a field day writing comics about this place.

redman042

I always wondered why Nextel worked exclusively with Moto. The were always 2-3 years behind everyone else. Now the gap is even wider.

uhm...Bob

@Joseph; the football system is actually made by Telex with Motorola's name on the headset.

[www.telexradiocom.com]

Go figure!

philipbarrett

Radio headsets, and also radios for wireless networks in base stations and also switch equipment. They make quite a bunch of stuff.

TechnoElf

Holy crap. I substituted 'FAA' for 'Motorola' and 'safety' for 'profit' and it described my employer perfectly!

bahalana

Motorola almost invented handheld radio commercials.
Those big boxy walkie-talkies you see in WWII movies? Made by Motorola.
They also pretty much invented the modern car radios (hence the name of the company).
(I could go on, but the rest of you can use Wikipedia as well as I can.)
It's a shame. This was a really great American technology company, a classic. It's too bad it's being destroyed from within by incompetence.

Lorne

Perfect illustration for this crash and burn!
Props.

ANoel

i went from moto flip phone to a BB Curve, awesomeness..
oh well moto, to be fair, your phones are hackable/mod-able :)

jvh

Moto == The New Commodore.

Anyone who remembers the sordid demise of CBM will recognize many of the antics being pulled by the clueless tards at the top at Moto.

olafson

Ed Zander sold off Freescale despite there being a solus 3G chipset contract still being in place. Result, Moto couldn't buy cheaper Qualcomm chipsets, Freescale kept the price high and all of the Moto 3G devices were uncompetitively priced.

-----------------
This is actually incredibly common when companies are sold or purchased. The companies brought in to do the "Gap Sessions" [identify gaps between what the current company does and what the new company will do], usually EY, PWC, KPMG (Bearing Point or whatever), Andersen (are they still around?) or some other company filled with consultants almost always fail to review contracts and accurately identify them as gaps. There are ways of selling that can break these contracts, but they are usually missed, and have to be upheld by the new company when they are found.

So basically, as it is common, you have to be able to work around them. One could assume that Moto simply sold Freescale at the wrong time (some other consultant told them to do that) because they were trying to compete with larger more efficient rivals and needed the money. And they wanted to be a handset company, not a chipmaker any longer.

Usually, you focus on volume over profitability when you believe your product is better and you are trying to push your way into marketshare. Once you have market share, you can divide up your market into the segments of it that you actually want, and let others fight for the ones you don't.

drewheyman

@olafson: Yeah except Commodore was NEVER the market force that Motorola was and is. This is the company that INVENTED the flip phone, INVENTED vibrating ringer, first rolled out li-ion batteries, first had different ringers (MicroTAC Elite, Nokia's 2110 didn't debut with that feature until a year later), brought the first clamshell formfactor phone out (StarTAC)... Motorola was always the sexiest, smallest, sleekest, most advanced phone available. The RAZR keypad? Stolen and copied by everyone from Pioneer to Jaguar.

Buford T. Justice

What the hell are board members doing at this time? Are they really that blind to what is actually going on?

ripfire4

my g.e.d education and knowledge about technology
can do wonders for motoral.

Hire me

GenNove

Maybe this is why Steve Jobs wipes the competition in MP3 players and cell phones. Say what you want about Apple's high prices, lack of features, and TV ads. Jobs at least has a clue about both technology and the market - and the ability to plan a couple of steps in advance. Seems that's all that's needed to pwn the "Pointy Haired Boss" competition.

Barcard

FACT: "Suits" screw up everything.

axiomatic

Motorola Can Haz Terry Semel?

spaceman7

M&A . . . here I come! I would love to drop my funds money to buy a chunk of this place and flip it. This sounds yummy to us Private Equity capitalists! :)

JJ910

The only thing that can save them now are swarovski crystals. Who doesn't love swarovski crystals? Lots and lots and lots of them. swarovski-encrusted phones, phone-encrusted swarovski crystals, swarovski-encrusted swarovski crystals. I will write up this most excellent idea and send it to the Motorola Board, along with a swarovski crystal for each member, cc: Gizmodo. Perhaps they will ask me to serve as interim CEO in order to implement an all swarovski all the time policy, and pay me in swarovski crystals. A fantasy? Perhaps. But isn't that the seed... nay, the very crystal... of all great innovation?!

frigg

Pfff... that isn't news. I've been saying that about Motorola for years and no one listened.

ajendus

@Joseph:
Do you really think the headsets you see at NFL games were made by Motorola? LOL

brutek

@Buford T. Justice: great post

sublimnl

@frigg: Well, thank you for crystallizing the debate for us.

ps61318

@GenNove: ginchiest

Your g.e.d education and knowledge about technology should stimulate your mind enough to educate on your self about the spelling of motorola.

(please no applaud needed:)

My father had one of the first motorola carphones in his car a good number of years ago. He loved it and absolutly no problem of having two cellphone and paying for them both. Weird how people have some sort of the same thing as "treands" in the fashion industry. Righ? No?

sorry... to stoned...

kevman90

Motorola has been making car phones since the 70's. Prior to cellular we had Improved Mobile Telephone Service or IMTS. It was improved in that it did not need a mobile operator to place the call. In the late 70's and early 80's a deluxe "Pulsar II" mobile phone sold for nearly $5,000! Even at that price they sold a ton of them. Yeah we've come a long ways and it is really sad the the suits at Motorola rather than the engineers are runing the place. We've seen some of this coming in the way Motorola has been runing the two way radio side of things. That business goes back to 40's and still leads the way in inovation. Some of those radios that the police officers carry on their belts (XTS5000) can cost $3000 plus depending on options. I hope we havn't seen the end of a great historic company brought down my greed and incompitence. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall"

radio