Motorola 殒落之真相？

Posted Mar 30th 2008 10:50AM by Casper Kao
分类: 移动电话


感谢读者建议咱们来好好看一下这篇，经过小编消化一下之后，颇有人生如戏、戏如人生的感慨。所谓好人不长命，真是说得有够他X的对！

总之，事情是这样的，约莫在上个月，咱们主站编辑连络上了这位 Numair Faraz，他也就是 Motorola 前营销长（CMO）、RAZR 手机之父、已故 Geoffrey Frost 的得力助手。在2005年Frost过世之后，Numair这几年就不断的被推离管理核心。被欺负成这样的结果，就是终于使他在今年二月， Motorola宣布分家过后没几天，向Motorola董事会全体成员和所有投资人，发送了一封他对于这公司如何犯下决策上的错误、以及管理阶如何无能做出的批评文。

主站编辑在研究这些批评的真实性之余（基本上他们对于 Numair Faraz 所提出的这些意见，认为都是实话实说），他们还发现了一些过去五年来 Motorola 内部的一些问题；包括了 Ed Zander 还有他的手下们如何为 "个人利益" 来奋斗等问题，甚至是现任 CEO Greg Brown 本身竟然是个不用电脑的人等这些怪现象，都再再的显露出管理阶层的...该说是无能吗？至少 Numair Faraz 在信中用了不少次这个字（inept，用这字算客气了！）。

信中内容的原文跟简单的重点摘要，这位可以在跳转后参考一下，但从中的各样建议、批评，真的是不难看出，为啥 Motorola 最终会走向这条分家路，大概因为他们也没辄了吧！

[原文连接]

以下条列重点

* Motorola 整个手机的营销决策，全然落在 CMO、RAZR 之父 Geoffrey Frost 一人之手，意思是说其它大部分的管理阶层都在吃干饭？根据 Numair Faraz 的说法，Motorola 前任 CEO Ed Zander 对于小白球的热忱远大于公司的经营管理 ==
* 由于当年 Geoffrey Frost 等于是把 Motorola 手机事业的兴亡一肩扛，在 ROKR 手机发展的时候，也是拼了老命在世界各地走透透，其它人？上面那段提过了...
* 当然在 ROKR 计划进行的同时，Geoffrey 其实还有推动软件服务，甚至将目标定在社群功能的想法，在当然 MySpace 跟 Facebook 都还不红甚是根本还没出现的时候，很难想象被 Motorola 做起来的话，现在的 Moto 又会是家怎样的公司？可惜，这计划被白球老爹给咖掉，因为他比较 favor 老乔的 iTunes（ROKR）手机，现在呢？
* 很多亲近 Ed Zander 的人都认为 Geoffrey Frost 是被他操死的。
* 在 Geoffrey Frost 过世以后，Ed Zander 并没有将 RAZR 赚来的大笔钞票，投资在更具有市场性、突破性的新产品上，这为人兄则是买了 Symbol 这家公司，以及从投资人手中买回了一堆 Motorola 自身的股票。
* 在 2007 年，Numair Faraz 曾经提醒 Zander 不能在这样败下去，他却责怪已故的 Geoffrey Frost 说他没有创造出比 RAZR 更好的产品；还要他等这看 Motorola 在 2008 年推出新的大物级产品。（大物啊！大物！你是在大雾里吗？）结果这个大物，竟是让 Motorola 大澈大悟的换了总裁，而他的离开，同时也让 Motorola 付出了近 3000 万美元（还不包括 Zander 拥有的股票）的代价。
* 新任总裁 Greg Brown 也没有好到哪去。就算他不像是过去的 CEO 一般无能，他的决策，似乎直接扼杀了 Motorola 在消费型手机通讯市场的前途。信中 Numair Faraz 指责 Greg Brown 不仅是对消费型手机市场一无所知，甚至认为他一心想要将 Motorola 手机部切出，也只是个逃避承担责任、不愿面对自身无能的手段而已；不仅没有尽力去重振手机事业，事实上是根本没有去尝试。要重振 Motorola 的手机事业，首要任务就是去找一个跟 Geoffrey Frost 一样有愿景的人才，并且将 Motorola 的发展，放置在个人前途之前，甚至应该对设计师施压，要他们开发出更好的产品，让过去哪种 RAZR 代表的富贵、特权，再次出现在 Moto 的手机上面。甚至要相信美国自行开发的软件，而不是全然不负责任的将软件外包给中国、俄罗斯等国。应该要好好利用 Linux 甚至是 Android 的平台，让 Motorola 的手机界面跳出石器时代。
* 应该要接纳集体分工模式（crowdsourced）的装置设计平台，放弃名人既昂贵有没有效力的代言策略，而是将 Motorola 的手机推广到各层次的消费者。去体认到最重要的事情，是社群的经营。

Numair Faraz 在信中大概提到了这些要点， 分隔线底下为原信内容，请各位参考参考！

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Dear Greg Brown, and the rest of the executive team at Motorola,

As you may or may not recall, I worked with Geoffrey Frost as a personal adviser during his days as Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of the company. I was the one quoted in Forbes in 2003 as saying "Motorola's biggest problem is that Samsung kicks ass," and eventually came to spend nearly three years working with Geoffrey during his efforts to revamp the company's mobile lineup, which eventually saw the launch of the RAZR. As I told the company's senior designers at Motorola's 75th anniversary meeting: create something cooler (and more expensive) than anything else out there, and everyone will want it.

After the success of the RAZR, while Geoffrey was tied up every which way in ROKR development, meetings, criscrossing travel, and so on, through his associates I implored the company to beef up their software expertise, and focus on creating socially networked devices (this was in the years before MySpace and Facebook became the juggernauts they are today). Your predecessor, Ed Zander, had little interest in this, and instead insisted on parlaying his relationship with Steve Jobs into the ill-fated ROKR effort in order to prop up Motorola's stock price.

Zander, who seemed to care more about his golf score than running one of America's greatest technology companies, left all of the hard work to Geoffrey; I've always considered it Motorola's dirty little secret that the strategy for their entire profit machine was run by the company's CMO -- not the rest of the company's executives, who are as inept now as they have ever been.

Many close to Geoffrey believed Ed Zander worked him to death, putting the pressure of the fate of the company in his hands. [That was certainly the buzz around the industry at the time. -Ed.] I took his untimely death in 2005 very hard, and knew that the company would head downhill in the aftermath. On a personal note, Lynne, his wife blamed the company for his passing. She committed suicide soon after.

Meanwhile, Ed Zander continued to reap the dividends of Geoffrey's work as the company made billions in profit from overselling the RAZR for years. Instead of channeling that money into the obvious -- further development of groundbreaking consumer devices -- Zander purchased enterprise companies such as Symbol ($3.9b), and engineered billions of dollars in stock buybacks.

As I told Zander in a phone call in 2007, I felt that he was setting the company up for massive failure. He had the audacity to say, "Well, maybe Geoffrey should have come up with a better successor to the RAZR," and told me to "Wait for big things in 2008." I guess he was right -- the golden parachute he got for his exit from the company was worth about 30 million dollars -- and that doesn't include his accumulated Motorola stock.

Your appointment to the position of chief executive gave me cause for hope, and I reached out to you; I knew you were one of the main drivers behind the enterprise acquisitions, and that you had zero expertise in consumer devices. Surely you could use some help in turning Motorola's flagging cellphone business around?

But apparently different from the rest of the incompetent senior executives at Motorola -- except instead of merely being inept, you're actually actively killing the company. Your lack of understanding of the consumer side of Motorola doesn't give you a valid reason for selling the handset business; moreover, publicly disclosing your explorations of such a move, in an attempt to keep Carl Icahn off your back, shows how much you value the safety of your incompetence.

You clearly have no interest in fighting the good fight and attempting to mold Motorola into the market leader it can and should be. Taking control of the handset division, as you have recently announced, will accomplish very little except but to give you an ability to say, "We tried our best" -- which you haven't -- when you finally do cart the business off to the highest bidder.

In order to turn the handset division around, you need to bring in another Frost; someone worldly and dynamic who is more interested in Motorola's success than their own corporate career. You need to task the company's designers with the same mantra that created the RAZR -- make me a phone that looks, feels, and works like a symbol of wealth and privilege. Recognize the superiority of American software, and bring back those jobs so irresponsibly outsourced to China and Russia. Fully embrace embedded Linux and Google's Android initiative, and take the phone operating system out of the stone age.

Recognize that, while rich people don't really know what they want, the lower end of the market does -- and fund the development of an online "crowdsourced" device design platform to take advantage of this fact. Get rid of all of your silly, useless marketing, including those overpriced and completely ineffective celebrity endorsements, and do one unified global campaign with Daft Punk (the only group whose global appeal extends from American hip hoppers to trendy Shanghai club kids to middle-aged Londoners). Understand that the next big feature in handsets isn't a camera or a music player -- it is social connectedness; build expertise in this area, and sell it down the entire value chain.

I was there when Motorola's handset division was brought back from the brink of death 5 years ago. Follow my advice, and we can do it again.

Maybe it sounds like I take the downfall of Motorola personally; I do. It was my experience at Motorola, with people like Geoffrey and all of the loyal employees who still remain, that taught me what corporate America can and should be. But with people such as Zander and yourself, Motorola symbolizes the worst of our country's corporate culture.

As an immigrant American, and someone who has traveled all over the world, I really do appreciate the uniqueness and importance of the American culture of creativity and ingenuity. Whereas other countries back their money on gold and commodities, we back ours on our ability to invent the future. The failure of Motorola as an American institution of creativity and innovation, should you let it happen, will now be entirely of your doing. Hopefully you'll keep that in mind while the board has the accountants prepare your golden parachute.

Regards,
Numair Faraz

Dated Feb 5, 2008. Letter edited for form.

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