
Motorola to Cut 20% of Work Force, Part of Sweeping Change - mjfern
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/technology/motorola-to-cut-20-of-work-force-part-of-sweeping-change.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
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hkmurakami
_>... Dennis Woodside, Motorola’s new chief executive, in a rare interview.

“We’re excited about the smartphone business,” said Mr. Woodside, who
previously led Google’s sales and operations for the Americas._

Interesting. They put a Sales/Ops guy at the helm of Motorola, which implies
that (in a way, naturally) all strategic decisions will be made by Google and
passed down to the subsidiary. (I think this is actually an important piece of
information to confirm, since a good portion of subsidiaries _do_ make
strategic decisions for themselves)

 _> In addition to the coming cuts, Google has gutted Motorola management,
letting go 40 percent of its vice presidents._

Great move, I'd have much more confidence in Motorola's engineering staff than
the (former) upper brass.

 _> They will focus on Motorola’s storied past and the ways the products are
better than the competition’s, like battery life. _

Not too sure about this; every OEM on the face of the earth is utterly
_obsessed_ about battery life. I don't think any OEM can make battery life a
differentiating feature. Every OEM presses all its suppliers and solutions
providers for maximal power efficiency, and of course, said suppliers cross
supply for many OEMs.

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yitchelle
Truly agree about the battery life. It the one thing that defines a mobile
device, be it a phone, a pocket calculator, a language translator etc.
Motorola would need to improve it by a couple orders of magnitude for it
become a game changer. Imagine having a mobile phone that only needs to be
charged once a fortnight!

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abrahamsen
You mean smartphone. My old Nokia 1200 did have two weeks battery time.

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BadassFractal
Got myself a Motorola Triumph last year, returned it within a week. The most
awful Android phone I ever used. Nonexistent battery, missed taps (almost
every 10 taps or so), GPS took about a minute or longer to latch on. Went back
to a 3 year old Optimus V, slow as hell, but at least it works as intended.

Not buying a Motorola phone until there's major indication that they got their
stuff together.

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pkulak
Can they just fire everyone who works on MotoBlur?

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Osiris
I'd attribute that fiasco to management, not necessary the unfortunate
employees forced to implement such a terrible idea.

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raverbashing
I would just fire everyone that ever got close to that thing just in case

Ok, management told them to drive off a cliff, then they went and did exactly
that.

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objclxt
...so you're telling me if you were asked by your boss to implement a software
feature you didn't like you'd leave your job on principle? Most people don't
have that luxury. Sure, you can moan about it, but sometimes you have to suck
it up.

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raverbashing
Not a feature that I didn't like, but something that's _obviously_ a train
wreck.

I've ended in situations like that, but then boss saw it was unsustainable and
a major overhaul was needed.

But if the company only goes for actively making the user experience crap for
nothing I would consider moving

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CrazedGeek
> And, people familiar with the companies say, Google could decide to follow
> Apple's lead and build a phone from silicon to software, perhaps by creating
> a separate operating system for Motorola that other phone makers cannot use.

The only way I could see this happening (within the next few years) is if
Google makes a Firefox OS-alike. They have way too much invested in Android to
give it up so suddenly.

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influx
Just make the next Android OS Motorola exclusive for 6 months, and then Open
Source it... They just have to balance between what they want to do and their
OEM partners.

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hkmurakami
I think that's too drastic of a move, and would severely alienate partners,
especially since Google has cultivated strong relationships with OEMs via
their GED programs.

A more sensible differentiating move would be to simply strive for a better
user experience and more seamless HW/SW integration in their MOT phones by
leveraging their deeper understanding of the OS and the framework.

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nmridul
They only have to do these two things \- Build more reliable hardware \-
provide stock android on all Motorola phones

That would make more people want to have a Motorola phone.

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eavc
>“It got left in the dust by the competition and kind of missed the smartphone
transition,” said Charles S. Golvin, a mobile analyst at Forrester Research.

Motorola's Droid was the best smartphone available at the time of its release
and sold tons. They didn't miss the transition, they fumbled.

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georgemcbay
As an original Droid owner, the Droid was a great phone.

Tying the phone to a brand name owned by Verizon was probably a bad idea, all
things considered, causing considerable confusion among mainstream non-techies
as to what they should upgrade to post "OG" Droid. And then they also
kneecapped the techie market by switching to locked bootloaders (they've since
recanted on this, but I still view the Motorola brand negatively solely
because of what they did with locked bootloaders in the past).

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bretpiatt
I like the changes they're making. Post-merger integration is the most
difficult part of a deal especially when you have significantly different
cultures. I understand "integration" here isn't combining them into one
operating company, it is the delivery of Google's vision of what Motorola can
become, a vision Motorola thought was wrong prior to the deal (or they would
have already been doing it).

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ehutch79
This can actually only be a good thing. There's so many layers of management
in motorola. Dealing with them is like a page form the script of brazil

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justanotheratom
Motorola is notorious for hiring and firing employees every year or two.

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mmariani
Let's just hope they fire the right ones this time. ;-)

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tcbawo
Agreed, it's almost like a public union -- where the ones who deserve to be
fired are the last to go.

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The8thDwarf
Those of you who are managers, can you tell me how it is possible to have a
group which is "not afraid of failure" after 20% layoffs and with everybody
wearing name badges with their expiration dates on them???

