Motorola in Trouble - Again

[Jim KF2SY]

Is this the Motorola Deathwatch?
sheeesh...tough crowd.

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

Zzzzzzz. How boring.

[Carl WA1KPD]

Where Motorola Blew It 

Business Week

The mobile-phone giant has lost its footing because the wireless industry has changed and the company hasn't kept up

By Jonathan L. Yarmis

Motorola's stunning quarterly loss is just the latest development in the company's long, inexorable decline from the very apex of the cell-phone market. Motorola (MOT), which effectively defined "Cell Phone 1.0," consistently missed the trends that have fundamentally changed the mobile-phone industry. Now, Motorola is teetering on the very edge of irrelevance. Does it even have a chance?

Cell Phone 1.0 was effectively defined by Motorola's groundbreaking Razr phone. The Razr defined the phone as fashion instrument and status statement. It also had an unusually long run with a near-monopoly on its form factor. Nokia (NOK) and others were slow to realize the affinity American consumers had for the clamshell form factor and the Razr's dramatically thin profile. However, as the cell-phone market was evolving toward Cell Phone 2.0, Motorola clung stubbornly to its old success, trying to recreate the magic with a succession of devices such as the Rokr, the Krazr, and the Lozr. O.K., that last one wasn't really a Motorola product introduction, but it might as well have been.

The evolution of the cell phone from 1.0 to 2.0 is all about the change from device to platform. While Apple's (AAPL) iPhone is certainly the best example of this transition, many of the other players in the market have been focused on this for a long time. What are the characteristics of a platform as compared with a device?

• Software

• Applications

• Ecosystem

• Experience

Motorola's track record in these areas is spotty at best—virtually nonexistent. Who's defining this new approach? For the most part, the key players are companies with little or no experience in cell phones. Instead, they come from the computer industry. Leading the way are Apple and Google (GOOG), which has championed the Android operating system for which anyone can develop applications. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) is rapidly trying to evolve in this direction, and Nokia has made significant, albeit largely unrewarded, efforts in the past few years. Microsoft (MSFT) and Palm (PALM) are also still relevant in this discussion.

Against this backdrop, Motorola has very few attractive options. The company's early commitment to the Windows Mobile platform, with the Q, has brought it no reward, and Microsoft's current challenges don't seem to offer a lifeline. Motorola has said that it plans to invest more resources in phones that use Google's Android, but the operating system is still in its early days. Given a fractured operating system platform, no clear partnership opportunity, and limited software expertise of its own, Motorola is likely to struggle for the foreseeable future.

The company has said that it plans to spin off its mobile-phone division, separating it from the company's other operations. But it's hard to see how such a structural change will address the enormous challenges at the company. With few available dance partners and an outdated strategy, Motorola has no clear path to return to its former glory.

Jonathan Yarmis is founder and principal analyst with the Yarmis Group, an independent analyst group.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2009/tc2009023_706976.htm?campaign_id=yhoo

[WA1GFZ]

They died in the late '90s. They are just running out of divisions to sell off to look good for the present quarter.

[K6JEK]

Did everyone on this board work for Moto at one time or another?

In the early 80's they bought a computer company I worked for,. Four-Phase Systems. They made bonehead mistake after bonehead mistake running it until it was no more.  They left it without a CEO for 1 year.  They shut down the Silicon Valley hardware engineering in favor of some guys in Tempe, AZ who built the sorriest excuses for computers I ever worked on, etc.  And this was when the company was being run by the old heroes, Bob Galvin, Mitchell and Weiss.

I went to work for Sun Micro which got even by sending them Ed Zander.

[WA1GFZ]

JEK does the name Messino ring a bell from Sun?

[Bill, KD0HG]

Moto is on track to go the way of RCA.

BTW, I use a Moto Razr flip phone. I love the thing. Its RF performance is excellent, durable, its small, drops into any pocket and the battery lasts days without recharging. I felt like Captain Kirk talking on the thing at first.

[K6JEK]

JEK does the name Messino ring a bell from Sun?

Yes it does.  I'm sure I worked with him.  Now if I could just remember what we were doing.  His first name is Steve, isn't it?

Jon

[WA1GFZ]

Wow,
Steve and I were High School friends. He just lost his Mom last Summer and we had a few beers after it was over. I had not seen him in 20 years. We pass a joke email once in a while. I visited him out there in '74 and came home with my first 4-1000A. We had a blast for about 3 weeks. He told me he worked for Sun a while. fc

[w8khk]

Did everyone on this board work for Moto at one time or another?

My first job after getting married and moving to Florida was with Motorola in Plantation.  I worked in a screen cage doing final test (mostly repair) of the 450mhz 6 channel hand-held radios they were pumping out for Chicago Public Safety contract.  Was 1971-1972, I was burned out after about a year, as the people hand-assembling them were incompetent and almost every one had to be disassembled and repaired in order to make spec.  Went on to do computer software development at STP Corporation in North Fort Lauderdale for Andy Granatelli.

[WA1GFZ]

Andy and the Jet Indy car...cool

[w8khk]

Andy and the Jet Indy car...cool

Yep, that STP Turbine Car sat on display in the front lobby of the headquarters offices on Commercial Blvd in Ft. Laud.   Walked past it every morning.

[WA1GFZ]

I had the same feeling walking next to an SR71.....I always walked around it once and touched it a couple times.

[w8khk]

One of those landed at Davis Monthan in Tucson in the mid 60s.  Back then I believe it was classified as YF-12A, prior to the SR-71 designation.  It was surrounded by armed guards, could not get within 100 feet of it.

[WA1GFZ]

They had one sitting in the Skunk Works parking lot just inside the gate.
I heard they wanted to give it away. I wanted it for my front yard but I had to provide the transportation. There is a parking lot full of them next to the Palmdale Ca. FAA building. I have not been there in a few years but they had a bunch of different planes parked there. A big open air exibit.
You were lucky to see it in the '60s.
A pair of the most beautiful sounding P&W motors.
Right up there with a B17  at idle on a damp chilly morning

[W3SLK]

Rick said:

One of those landed at Davis Monthan in Tucson in the mid 60s.  Back then I believe it was classified as YF-12A, prior to the SR-71 designation.  It was surrounded by armed guards, could not get within 100 feet of it.

I thought I read somewhere that it was originally designed as nuc delivery platform. But when they realized just how fast it would go, that it would never be able to carry out its intended purpose with any accuracy. So why not a super-fast camera

[WU2D]

I spent 6 months working at the old Chelsea Proving Grounds in Michigan in 1993. This was Chryslers famous first test area and the place that the Abrams tank engine turbine was developed and all of the great MOPARS. One of the driver mechanics took me to see a turbine car that they had restored in one of the mod buildings. It was under a yellow cover. Apparently Chrysler made a small fleet of these turbine cars in 1963. Not many exist now, most were crushed, but the only practical use was that of the Tank engines.

These guys said, Mike you want to see it run? I said yeah but after seeing the engine which looked like an atom bomb and the batmobile louvers out the back, I walked a distance away as they fired up the 24VDC starter motor wound it up to 12K and and touched off the JP-3 jet fuel (which was what the car runs on). Holy Holy Holy is all I can say.

Mike WU2D

[Tom WA3KLR]

I remember seeing the turbine car in a Chrysler dealer in Jenkintown, PA back then.  One spark plug.  My dad was a Desoto fan/owner.

[WA1GFZ]

YF12has suposed to deliver pheonix missile to any plane coming this way. YF12 has a turning radius of 200 miles so no dog fighter. SR71 was designed to take pictures and out run anything coming at it. A pair of 100 foot flames of burning tar "JP7"
F14 got the missile.
X51 is supposed to fly soon at twice the speed.

Also it is pretty hard to get a bomb off a plane at M3. Tends to bounce back off the shock wave and hit the plane. I would imagine opening a bay door could also be a chore.