bobthegreat

The Odd Story of Navteq, Moto, Zander & Galvin

why is anything that zander said relevant? he was partially responsible for nearly killing MOT. Stupid ideas that meant nothing and had no real business rationale (e.g., "seamless mobility"), bad personal decisions (e.g., Ron Garriques), limited understanding of the business (e.g., Razor pricing and no solution to the fundamental issues faced by MDB). All in all a disaster...

Ed and Garriques destroyed MOT.

Vodafone's 'Gets' the Web, Unlike Many of Its Peers

this is a joke! anyone who knows Vodafone well, knows it has a low quality management team, broken processes, and demoralized staff in Newbury (including the UK Co). To believe that any innovation that makes a difference can come out of there is just naive and silly. Sorry for being so blunt.

About 3 years ago (3 years!) Arun Sarin said it would change the business and announced something called Mobile plus. Nothing material happened. The company missed its targets because of Spanish migrant workers (what a joke!)!!! It is just a silly company which generates large margins despite its management team because it has a license to print money from the regulators. It does not get the web. It may not even get its own business, as recent results suggest and the dilutive acquisitions of subscale dsl properties in Spain and Italy demonstrate.

Motorola Breakup: The Loss of a Once-Great Company

The RAZR was developed while Galvin was the CEO and Dick Lynch run mobile devices. Ron Garriques, who was running Europe at the time riding the success of the triplets, initially thought the phone was ugly.

When Zander came and appointed Garriques to lead mobile devices, Ron changed his mind about the RAZR. He then brought in a legion of Mckinsey consultants who created with him a plan to be "number 1 in 1000 days." It was based on the stupid idea of superficial, brown-nosing consultants that MOT could compete with NOK across the portfolio, including the low end, without addressing fundamental issues such as the silicon and software platforms.
Ironically, I guess the 1000 days are to be completed sometime around now. Has anyone asked McKinsey to give back the millions of dollars MOT paid, after all their plan failed?

It will be very difficult, perhaps impossible, to turn around MDB now. NOK and Samsung are not sitting back. MOT has made absolutely no progress resolving the software and silicon issues. The portfolio will not be competitive for the next several quarters either in the high end or in the low end, no matter what management does. It is hopeless....