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What we're seeing is just a shaking out of the "Me Too" companies, those corporations which thought they could slap together a few keys, screen, and phone innards and make money. The real players are those who truly innovate.

Just look at Moto: They were very successful with the RAZR (which is really just a slimmer version of the old Star-Tac), but it became stale and other handset manufacturers caught up and passed it.

The real problem is that handset manufacturers think that innovation means some new physical eye-catching feature. Those are great, but when the OS takes forever to navigate through, people don't fall in love with their phones. So they don't mind moving on to the latest, greatest phone (offered at a reduced rate or free with their next phone contract in the US).

Very little brand loyalty exists, particularly because many of the phones are branded by the service providers, and users may not even know who makes their phone.

Mar 10, 08 - 01:05 pm Comment from: Buster

Soon there will be but one phone.

one phone to rule them all.....

And it shall be called iPhone...and the people saw it was good.

And we all phoned happily ever after. The end (of motorola anyway)

The Razr is a GREAT PHONE! It's a perfect phone.

That's is if all you want is a phone with a long battery life, thin pocket profile.

Now that I'm on the road, trying to find free WiFi spots is a hassle with my MacBook Pro.

But then again I got a nice 15" matte screen, plus I can do a whole lot more, with a lot more storage, than a iPhone.

Somehow if I could get a phone card for my MacBook Pro...

I hear you, speak up! What's the best one?

Mar 10, 08 - 01:20 pm Comment from: Jubei

Oh man... I think its safe to say that the competition that continues to spout off with cocky repertoires against Apple is a clear sign of a death sentence for them.

Mar 10, 08 - 01:25 pm Comment from: Hentercenter

Motorola will eventually fall to pieces if they do not come up with something eye-catching on the outside and create a great OS to go with it. But I think that they will stick with their current mindset and try to make a slim "cooler" phone and fail.

Leave Palm alone MDN, at least they have kept their hardware and software compatible with Mac since forever. Not to mention the only way you could pry me from my $100 (and can do more than the iPhone with the same hardware) Centro is if the iPhone came to Sprint when they release WiMax this year. I watch NFL Network Live and can use bluetooth to transfer files between my mac and my phone. I don't think ATT or the iPhone can do either. But they could.

Mar 10, 08 - 01:33 pm Comment from: Willie G

@Mad Mac Maniac

The RAZR is a perfect phone? Wow, your standards are pretty f-in low

Ichan in the middle of this mess has to be painful. He sure isn't going to support investment to stay in the business, and I can't see who the heck would buy it, because, it's underpinnings (hidden jewels) aren't there. They've been outinnovated and outsourced.

I used to work for MOT when the phone division was called the Personal Communications Sector. Apple isn't Motorola's problem (after all, MOT has sold *far* more phones than Apple has). Motorola's problems are:

1. Not keeping up with innovation. Mobile phones aren't luxury items anymore, and people want a phone that is reliable, durable, and just works. A portion of the market wants a high-end phone like the iPhone, but the majority of people still just want a phone that works.

2. Mis-management. Back when Chris Galvin was CEO, I distinctly recall an email he sent out stating that Motorola had to move away from a "tribes" mentality, we had to be "one Motorola" and not be fighting other divisions within the company. Which is all well and good, but then he still had a compensation plan that rewarded division heads for cost reductions regardless of how it affected the company overall. On top of that, there were re-organizations practically every year. Way too much money wasted on changing organizational structure, division names, etc. Changing the name of a thing isn't going to improve results, but the management at the time didn't have the patience to wait for results or to make tough decisions.

3. Outsourcing everything. It seems that Motorola has outsourced almost all of their work these days. CSC handles all of their IT work, and overcharges to boot. Their HR has been outsourced. Manufacturing is done on a contract basis with vendors. The emails I recall seeing were all geared towards the "we're focusing on our core talents", but even design has at least partially outsourced. What else is there, other than management?

I wonder if they still use the employee ranking system that they had in place when I worked there. It was not a system that any employees that I know off were impressed with, and I believe that HR was even against some of the policies that were put in place. Essentially, the system ranked all employees into 3 groups- top-tier folks who were ready for a promotion, solid workers, and those not living up to the job requirements. The problem was, they decided that the bottom 10% were by default pretty much not welcome. It didn't matter if a category of employees were all doing a great job- 10% of them would be encouraged to leave. It essentially boiled down to a popularity contest for many employees, especially those in smaller-population job roles. I was always ranked high, but the system was intrinsically unfair, especially since employees had no chance to make corrections to their performance over the course of a year.

It's a shame with what's happening to the company- it was a good job while it lasted. I feel sorry for all the folks in the mobile phone division with what's hanging over their heads right now. Hopefully, some one will either come along and buy the division and get it turned around, or those folks will find jobs with other companies with a little better management practices.

The really ironic and sad thing is that Apple was willing to work with and give prime positioning to Motorola. But Motorola totally underestimated the value that Apple brought to that partnership leading the horrible ROKR, and then just kept underestimating Apple after Apple walked away.

Mar 10, 08 - 02:07 pm Comment from: Woody

@ Mad Mac Maniac: Yeah, the RAZR is a great phone if you like something that's a fragile POS. At the company where I worked until last November, everyone got those spiffy new RAZRs. Within months, all of them broke at the hinge. Employees were going out to buy phones on their own dime so they could get something besides a RAZR. My brother who still works there got one of the beefy Motorolas (forget the model), and a couple of other people have gotten iPhones.

Mar 10, 08 - 02:16 pm Comment from: stormy

Buster...

Competition is good for everyone! Competition helps drive innovation. Competition helps drive down pricing. Without competition even Apple would become complacent.

Hmmm... my RAZR V3M has been rock solid, particularly with a snap on, rubberized shell. Can't beat it for reliability or voice quality. The OS sucks, but that's Verizon's fault more than Moto's. It works fine though for what I use it for. In the absence of an iPhone being available on Verizon, it'll do for now.

ROFLMAO --- hey ed!!
"How do they deal with us?"
They make you the Gimp, and get medieval on you!!
that's how - lol