Worst of the Week: My five-point plan to fix Motorola

Hello!
And welcome to our Thursday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
Over the course of about a year or so, Motorola has tumbled from the No. 2 to the No. 5 position among global cellphone vendors, according to market share. The slide coincides with the company’s massive financial and product failings. And now, in the course of around 400 words, I’m going to fix everything.
See, I’m paid to watch the cellphone industry, so I fancy myself somewhat informed. Thus, I’m absolutely, positively sure I have all the answers, and the smart folks over at Motorola are simply nowhere near as smart as me (after all, I went to college!). I’m sure my mother would back me up on this.
Anywho, this all brings me to my five-point plan for Motorola. Yessir, in just five short points I’m going to lay out a path to financial stability and market dominance for a multibillion-dollar technology company with thousands of employees that has been in business for decades. No sweat:
1. Don’t make any more phones running Windows Mobile. If you’ve ever used Windows Mobile, you will quickly understand why I say this (it’s torturous). Evidence? Windows Mobile licensees are replacing Internet Explorer Mobile with Opera. It’s just that bad. Further, if the PC industry is any indication (and I would argue it is perhaps the best indication) licensing Windows products does not profit make. Just ask IBM.
2. Break out of the box with some cool services. Look, pleasing your operator partners by kowtowing to their every whim – and pre-installing all their lame apps – is yesterday’s strategy. Witness the Apple App Store and Nokia’s Ovi. The time is now to cull the best third-party apps out there and make them your own. This includes Opera Mini, Moodio.fm, Google Maps for Mobile, Skype, YouMail – and the list goes on. Indeed, offering a text-messaging service that runs over a standard data channel (instead of a carrier’s signaling channel) would save customers from carriers’ exorbitant texting fees and endear Moto to the cost-conscious (meaning, everybody).
3. Mimic and innovate. I know “mimic and innovate” are just buzzwords that mean nothing, but here’s what I suggest: Mimic the iPhone’s touchscreen user interface, but innovate by adding a 3D component to the equation. Imagine a device with a graphically rich, 3D menu, and a corresponding developer’s kit. Cool.
4. Give me a million dollars.
5. Give your phones really, really cool names. After all, researchers at Strategic Naming Development found that cool names sell. They pointed to the Shine, Vu, Voyager, Dare, Decoy, UpStage, FlipShot and Juke as evidence. Now, I think those names are totally lame, so I would suggest better ones like Killer, Destroyer, Meat Grinder and Gladiator. Snake Eater would also work well.
And it’s just that easy!
See, Motorola’s problems are many and varied, but I think it’s clear that a few small changes – such as overhauling the company’s cellphone product strategy – would do a world of good. Greg Brown and Sanjay Jha, you’re welcome (I accept checks, cash and money orders).
OK! Enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this Worst of the Week column. And now, some extras:
—Bird calls are now available on the iPhone, thanks to the new Peterson Mobile Field Guide. Hilarious. After all, “birding (is) America’s number-one outdoor activity,” according to the press release. Double hilarious.
–Bytemobile announced it will simplify the mobile Internet (finally!) with the release of its latest product. And what product is that, you ask? Why, it’s the “Widget Bar, an optional application of (Bytemobile’s) Web Fidelity Suite software.” If it’s actually called a “Widget Bar,” I suspect it only complicates matters further. Update: I just finished speaking with the kind folks over at Bytemobile, and they explained the features, functions and reasoning behind the company’s Widget Bar. And though I’m not sure I’m convinced on the ultimate usefulness of the offering (and I still cringe at the moniker “Widget Bar”) I wish them luck in their endeavors.
–Speaking of dumb names, there’s a new company called “GLOBO Mobile.” I kid you not. And this is even better: GLOBO Mobile’s latest product is called “CitronGO!T.” Sadly, I suspect it’s not a type of liquor.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at mdano@crain.com. Or, if you prefer, leave a comment in the space below.