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Aug 5 2008 9:54AM EDT

Moto's Challenge for its New Co-CEO

Kevin Maney writes: Motorola's handset division badly needs some ray of light to eke into its darkest hour -- and employees might just see that today. The company hired well-regarded Sanjay Jha, who had been Qualcomm's chief operating officer, to be the company's co-CEO with current CEO Greg Brown.

Yes, it's an odd arrangement. (The only true co-CEO situation I can think of that actually works is, coincidentally, at Motorola competitor Research In Motion.) But in this case, it makes sense. For one, it seems that it was the only way Brown could lure a top-level star to the position. And, two, Motorola plans to split off the handset division, at which point Jha would be that company's CEO while Brown stays with the other stuff Moto makes.

Jha will have a huge challenge ahead. It's worse than Motorola simply not having great competitive phones now -- it's in a situation where it has trouble creating new designs in time to keep up with Nokia, Samsung, RIM and the rest. Many of its phones are still being built on an ancient, creaking software platform that was supposed to die four years ago. It's behind on the chipsets that drive the guts of the phone. Cellular carriers such as AT&T and Verizon Wireless are carrying fewer and fewer Moto phones. While Motorola has been No. 3 in cell phones, LG just put out a press release saying it expects to move past Moto this quarter.

Jha has done great things at Qualcomm. Maybe he can do them at Motorola. At any rate, Moto employees seemed eager to learn about their new leader -- they drove his name toward the top of Google's Hot Trends ranking.

 

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