Motorola announced today that chief executive Ed Zander was finally going to make his long-awaited exit. He says he plans to "spend more time with my family".
Motorola's RAZR phone was an amazing success, shifting more than 50m units. However, the company has failed to come up with an equally successful replacement, and both profits and market share have slumped -- along with the share price. Forbes reported earlier this year:
In the latest cost-cutting effort, Zander has announced another round of layoffs. Following the cuts, Motorola will have less than half the number of employees that it did in 1999. In February of this year, the company told employees that pay raise intervals would be stretched out and bonuses reduced. That memo apparently didn't apply to Zander, to whom the board of directors awarded a "performance bonus" of options to purchase 800,000 shares at higher prices than the stock is now trading.
Zander's image suffered when he was shafted at his own launch by Apple boss Steve Jobs. Briefly, Motorola licensed iTunes for the ROKR phone, geared up for a big promotion, and had its product upstaged by Steve Jobs pulling an iPod nano out of his pocket. To rub salt into the wound, Apple limited the ROKR to only 100 songs, then announced that the Nano would hold 1,000. (Jobs later trashed the ROKR as "an iPod shuffle on your phone," while Zander said "Screw the nano".)
However, I'd guess that what really did for Zander was the plunge in sales that led to Samsung taking over Motorola's traditional No 2 spot in the world mobile market (Tuesday, below).
In our Business section, Richard Wray reports on Motorola chief shunted aside.
