Martin Garner
Motorola feeling the heat: Ron Garriques leaves for Dell
Ron Garriques, EVP and President of Motorola's Mobile Devices business announced his resignation on Friday last week, effective immediately. He will move to Dell to take the role of head of the Consumer Division. He will be replaced for now by two people - Ray Roman, senior vice president, global sales, and Terry Vega, senior vice president, global devices.Comment: This departure comes off the back of two poor quarters for the Mobile Devices business caused by a lack of hero products in the portfolio to take up the running from the ageing RAZR. We suspect that Q1 devices sales in Motorola are horrible and that the discussion between Ron Garriques and Ed Zander, CEO, was full and frank.Ron Garriques has always been upbeat about the portfolio at Motorola. Even in a December 2006 investor presentation, he trailed some of the forthcoming devices and described them (as usual) as 'wickedly cool' and 'wow'.However, the truth is harsher than this.The KRZR launched last summer, and was billed as the successor to the RAZR. But it does not take users much beyond the RAZR experience and - while it's a neat design - it is priced too high and is not selling in big enough volumes.Motorola's recent launches have not been very exciting. CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) saw the release of an upper mid-tier music phone, the RIZR Z6, and the nine-month old Ming phone launched in Europe. 3GSM saw the launch of two new versions of the Blackberry-like Q (one HSDPA, one GSM/EDGE), an HSDPA version of the KRZR and the new Z8 - a video lead-experience phone with a novel form factor.The move into HSDPA is welcome, and in particular should position the Q strongly in the email device market for Europe.But the Z8 is frustrating. At first sight it is attractive and interesting with HSDPA, a high quality screen and software to provide users with a strong video experience. However, it is thicker than the RAZR, it will not play YouTube videos and the camera is only 2-megapixels. Nokia launched YouTube playing software at 3GSM, and the benchmark for smartphone cameras is now 3.2-megapixels with autofocus. Samsung even launched the Ultra 5.9 with a 3-megapixel camera in a device just 5.9mm thick. We suspect that the time-to-market for the Z8 was long enough that it has emerged late and with an uncompetitive spec sheet.Motorola is missing out on growth in the smartphone market. It is struggling on profitability at the low end and its mid-range portfolio is not strong enough to carry it.
