Conventional wisdom on Motorola hits fork in road

As major media outlets deliver their take on the departure of Motorola Inc.’s CEO Ed Zander, two camps are forming. Anointed CEO-to-be Greg Brown is the right man at the right time. Or he isn’t.
Since joining Motorola in 2003, Brown has led the company’s government equipment division, its infrastructure business and spearheaded the nearly $4 billion acquisition of Symbol Technologies, noted BusinessWeek.com. Brown led the company’s automotive business, made it profitable and sold it off for $1 billion. He was groomed to succeed Zander, in part, by Zander himself.
“He’s the right guy,” said Robert Laikan, CEO of Brightpoint, a leading cellphone distributor, quoted by BusinessWeek.
The Wall Street Journal Online also mentioned that Brown was selected by Zander, if only to raise the question of whether the new CEO’s thinking would be sufficiently different from the old CEO to affect the changes needed at Motorola.
The WSJ quoted Jefferies & Co. analyst Bill Choi: “I’m still not quite sure if Brown is big enough to take Motorola to the next level.”
Brown is tasked with refreshing Motorola’s portfolio beyond its now-dated Razr platform, resurrecting both the company’s profits and market share and playing catch-up with 3G phones for both GSM and CDMA markets. According to Strategy Analytics, over half of all mobile handsets sold in the United States, a market in which Motorola still dominates, are 3G-enabled. Motorola’s failure to anticipate the market has been, in part, credited to its lag in providing 3G phones.
But Motorola’s board of directors has displayed patience in the recent past. Having replaced former CEO Chris Galvin (grandson of the founder) in 2003 with Zander and having given Zander plenty of time to recoup the company’s fortunes-which sagged badly under the latter’s guidance-it appears the board has made its choice.
Still circling: Activist investor Carl Icahn has reportedly increased his stake in Motorola and, having failed last May to gain a seat on its board, Icahn has renewed his call for the company’s four major businesses to be broken up into four separate companies.