Dr. Sanjay Jha has left his position as COO of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT) to become the Co-CEO of Motorola Inc. and the CEO of Motorola Mobile Devices, the new handset division. The handset division, which has struggled over the last few years, will be formally spun out of Motorola in the third quarter of 2009. Props to Jha , who has a vision for the future of mobile computing, and who is well respected by many in the industry for his work with engineers and designers. However, the news is grim indeed for Freescale Semiconductor, the former chip division of Motorola.
Freescale has been the top chip supplier for Motorola’s phones, but in recent quarters Freescale has seen its former parent reduce orders due to lackluster handset sales and because of new contracts with chip suppliers that mean Motorola can buy chips from Texas Instruments or Qualcomm. With a former Qualcomm executive leading the handset division, the folks in Austin are likely concerned.
At Qualcomm, Jha will be replaced by three executives. Len Lauer, executive vice president of Qualcomm and group president, has been promoted to chief operating officer, while Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, has been promoted to president of QCT. In addition, Jim Lederer was recently promoted to executive vice president of business planning and finance for QCT.
6 trackbacks so far
12:23 PM PT
[...] He said he needs 90 days to figure things out.Jha was so valuable to Qualcomm that the company needs three execs to replace him. Motorola’s going to pay him a $1.2 million base salary and target bonuses at about [...]
5:19 PM PT
[...] de nombrar al nuevo responsable máximo de Motorola, Sanjay Jha, que viene de Qualcomm y por el que sus accionistas están poniendo todas sus fichas y esperanzas, para no dejar que Nokia [...]
6:55 AM PT
[...] division was in trouble, especially as its largest customer (former parent company Motorola) began buying its chips from Qualcomm and TI. Unfortunately for Freescale, most of its wireless technology wouldn’t be that [...]
2:32 PM PT
[...] asset. Its largest customer, Motorola, has been taking on chipsets from new suppliers, including Qualcomm, which recently lost its COO to Motorola, and could expect more deals as a result of that. It’s also a smaller player in the industry [...]
11:45 PM PT
[...] Jha, who now heads up Motorola’s handset business (which is likely to be spun out some time soon), was another proponent of Android, back when he was [...]
8:41 AM PT
[...] Jha, who now heads up Motorola’s handset business (which is likely to be spun out some time soon), was another proponent of Android, back when he was [...]
1 comment so far
11:04 AM PT
Kind of funny to read the headline, dont know if it was on purpose, of highlighting “Qualcomm loses..”, rather than “MOTO gets…”
But yes, will be very interesting to see how things shape up, Sanjay has been instrumental behind Qualcomm’s success and is akin to what Steve Jobs is to Apple.
But it will be new challenges for him in MOTO with all the politics and the consumer oriented-ness of the handset business… remember, Nokia now calls itself a “web services” company and sees its main competition as Google and not the traditional handset manufactures anymore.
But Sanjay did say he recognizes this as his weakness during the conference call and will be getting outside talent to address this so will be very interesting.