Brown’s Strategy For Motorola, More Of The Same But A Little Bit Better

The Chicago Tribune has a piece on Greg Brown, the man tapped to replace Ed Zander as CEO of Motorola. It’s a bit of a beat-up being all positive…no mention of concerns raised by some industry watchers that Brown is too much “Zander’s man” and is therefore unlikely to provide the change in direction which is required. Brown will continue Zander’s strategy of “seamless mobility” which requires harmonization across all the business units, and Yankee Group analyst John Jackson questions whether that is at all possible, whether “there’s a strategic thread that can weave all these things together in a logical fashion”.

Anyway, Brown at least seems to recognize the importance of the handset business to Motorola, (NYSE: MOT) and his strategy will be “to wow the markets with a strong lineup of mobile devices in 2008 and to spark a new sense of urgency into research and development”…which is easier said than done. He thinks functionality will be more important than flashy design in winning customers back to Motorola , a significant shift from the philosophy behind the first Razr and one which may yield interesting dividends…or at least interesting handsets. He places a lot of emphasis on the team, pointing out that Motorola has replaced half of the leadership positions in the mobile devices unit in the past few months. The tricky part will be the wait — if he does have a strong and positive impact on Motorola’s handsets it won’t be evident for a year or so…

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