So yesterday, Motorola comes out with some optimistic sounding news (well, unless you're getting the axe) of streamlining the operation and shifting focus to Android, an OS that is built specifically for its relative ease to bring to market. And then, one day later on their quarterly earnings call (in which they announced a staggering loss of $400 million in one quarter), new president Sanjay Jha says we won't see the first Android-powered Moto phone until Christmas of next year, notwithstanding any further delays? Yeah, I guess that's about right. So Jha wasn't joking when he said the earliest Motorola could start to turn things around is in the second half of 2009. But to be so thoroughly tripped up on Android, a platform that is built specifically to be easily mated with a diverse range of devices with relatively few engineering headaches (and zero licensing costs, remember) is kind of shocking. I guess there is some merit in waiting until you get things right, but wow—you'd think they'd have been preparing for this since the Android SDKs have been out for, oh, a year or so already? According to Moconews, who was on the call, Jha explained his company's sluggishness thusly:
One of the things that we need to do better is execution on software strategy. Execution has been poor. Talent we are looking for is software execution. Have great software talent around the world. Ex Good Technology staff working on forward-looking developments. In terms of time to market, once we get these platforms solidified and delivering products, will have much better oiled machine and will be competitive with other folks in the industry.
Goes to show how difficult it is to overcome the intertia of failure a wrecked corporate culture can generate. [Silicon Alley Insider, Moconews]