bobvilla

twilight-arc

Dear Greg, blá blá blá...

FINISH HIM!!!

"The failure of Motorola as an American institution of creativity and innovation, should you let it happen, will be entirely of your doing. Hopefully you'll keep that in mind while relaxing with your golden parachute."

NUMAIR FARAZ WINS!!!

Luiz_Brazil

What are you talking about? Since when was Perl a distribution method?

Perl was a scripting language last time I used it.

stan_i_am

Brookespeed

Spoony Bard

RubiksPube

Output, output, output - not talk. The Prosumer of today - the readers of this blog are not fools.

Motorola needs(ed) outstanding product.

R&D, risk tolerance + talent = success

flyboy

Anyway, I must say, although I really do not care about Motorola, I do hope they take this chance to forget pride, and take some of this information and implement it.

skilled1

Comment on his claims or add your own.

pacalis

As other phone co's targeted more specialized markets the RAZR was just a Startac with a pretty screen and a bunch of third party apps. Not that the RAZR wasn't a great reliable phone. It just that it wasn't a modern phone and didn't change anything inside motorola.

I'm not close to this, but much of what is written resonates with what I know.

pacalis

ninjatales

It is truly a fantastic letter.

I'm gonna go write one of my own... should you not see me back for a while, call the cops. :)

On another note, when Motorola sold its share of Symbian software to Nokia, I got very worried, thought they might have had another strategy, but now i see the mishap.

OneObuyan

Aaron Martin-Colby

you think i don't know what i'm talking about? let's take a quick straw poll: how many of you pay any money at all for facebook, myspace, or spring the bucks for classmates.com? When the answer is $0, then why develop competing software that is by its nature exculusionary to what already exists? IE, why compete with $0? Where is the value? Remember, Motorolla was a handset company, not a services company, and transitioning means ditching all the people they have, just like they are doing.

Do you really think motorolla put the 100 song limit on the rokr, or were they pushed around by Apple? what was Motorolla to do about that? drop Apple and create their own distribution method, or take it and loose all the money they put into developing a music player phone?

How is Motorolla to "crowdsource" good software, when they don't have a software distribution method (even something as simple as Perl, much less ITUNES) currently? Note that not everyone who buys a phone (or even more than 10% generously) wants to develop software to make a call.

How much profit did Motorolla actually make off the RAZR? Enough to fund huge R&D budgets against approximately 20ish competitors and 3 radio signalling technologies? I'm not sure, but the ROKR and PEBL say to me, "not that much".

These are the questions that dude's comments should raise. He spouts out more MBA terms than Ryan on his paper website (crowdsourcing, Android, social networks), which was meant to be a joke on the show I think.

drewheyman

Daft Punk is incredibly weak and boring these days anyway. doing more following than trailblazing.

x23

chop88

There is a bit of Bob Lazar of this story. Was this person important with in the company? Did they have a lot of information? We need some facts checked to help improve the light that this e-mail stands under.

I am critical because most of the information I find on Numair Faraz point to social networking sites. If he/she owns Faraz.com, it is not up and running. The administrator of Faraz.com is at Numair.com, which is also showing up 404. The sites were registered some time ago (1998 and 2003 respectively). If Numair Faraz is the person that created their business information on ZoomInfo, they don't mention their time at Motorola (at least I didn't see it).

In short, with out an interview by Gizmodo or at least some basic fact checking, this e-mail means little. This thread does little justice to Numair Faraz, Motorola, or Gizmodo with out more detail.

DeadWriter

wonkydonky

Outrageous management compensation is something relatively new and unjustified. Case In Point: Michael Eisner.

It's a sad day when glorified crank-turning check-cashers get their friends on the board and aren't regularly audited the way they should be.

The US won't remain competitive for long if your paradigm is accepted in any way.

wonkydonky

arrgh406

Here are some facts on Numair Faraz: he was written up in a Wall Street Journal article June 22, 2007 regarding the Facebook audio application that he single-handedly wrote; he was 5 years old when he began learning MS-DOS; at 10, he began studying the C++ programming language. At 15 he spent his summer drafting a book on computational neuroscience for the layperson. When he was 17, he formed the Faraz Corporation which focuses on creating innovative online services that move businesses and consumers into the future. He is now, president and CEO and the company has revenues in excess of $50 million.

chonnes

I don't think it too late tho. Most people still know Motorola as the "cool people who made the RAZR", not as the failing company we know them as. Just ditch this ROKR, RIZR, RAZR crap and move on. Create something fresh and new that has something the people want and that RAZR crowd they captured before will come crawling back.

Stop buying the company jets and million dollar bonuses and pay the R&D team more (yes, the people who actually matter) to create something new. Then put it on Verizon and watch them advertise the hell outta the thing. I mean, no one has more commercials than them. After that, spread the phone to the other carriers and watch the money roll in. Damn, I should be the CEO.

Syrus28

brutek

rainfever

bugstomper2

Palestina

awesome. Rock on, Numair!

sansovino

ezman

I just think he comes across as a petulant child when he basically blames Moto's downfall on their not following his advice. His social networking strategy may or may not have worked when he proposed it. But hindsight is 20/20.

DiddyBear

Moordryd

You cannot make that comparison. Motorola has one section that is doing poorly. The other businesses are doing well, and will continue to for a while.

FuzzysFriedChicken

Doing these things allow you to repackage current gen technology into a sexy package that everyone is willing to pay next-gen prices for (see: Apple). If the buzz can be maintained, you can string out each market segment as you slowly lower the price while maintaining your margins.

Sounds like Moto just lost the wrong guy on the product side and the other execs got focused on share price (like they're supposed to be) without replacing the talent they'd lost.

WMyers

In any case, it doesn't really matter that Motorola dies. Corporations don't exist to create great products or meet consumer needs, they exist to produce wealth for the people who own and run them. Sometimes they manage to do that by creating great products and meeting consumer need and when that does happen, it's almost inevitable that everyone will grab the money and run.

Dinosaurs die and monkeys take their place... then the monkeys become dinosaurs and new, smaller and faster monkeys come along. It's the way things go. Don't shed a tear for Motorola. Congratulate the fat white men who managed to get smart immigrants to make them rich and be happy for the brief burst of cool stuff that came from it.

And for those left in the aftermath a great company's demise, don't waste your time with the teeth gnashing and the rending of cloth... dust off your resumé and move on.

inkswitch

Although, maybe he will be a good attaboy golf game manager one day.

After all, why pay expensive American developers when you can get some kids to "crowdsource" your designs for free? Just let them into your design rooms and have at it.

Also, Daft Punk is crap.

drewheyman

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

CruJones

jaisin

flyboy

Crippling the phones in order to sell me more expensive services isn't going to win me over. I'll just go out of my way not to use the services.

ganjablue

wonkydonky

Where I work, the President and the VP of a subdivision will sit around the workers and BS about golf, issue derogatory remarks about employees, females, racist remarks about people they would never hire nor vote for, (exhibit behavior that is improper in the workplace...).
It may be a small company (not traded nor public) but it makes money. And within another year, have assents that would make for a nice lawsuit (hint hint).

Do I care about Motorola handsets? After reading this, I want to ditch my Moto cell phone for something else, maybe by LG (Lucky Goldstar) or Samsung.

Numair (if that is a person and not some fictional rhetoric), you should be running a company. You are wasting time and talent and air on "US Executives that are nothing more than insecure, greed-driven imbeciles, driven to succeed infront of their peers and yap about golf scores and latest unimportant crap, with more focus on their goldenparachutes than a quality product, a reputation and success for all".

I'm moving to Europe. They don't oppress over there anymore. And its getting stuffier and dumber over here.

SigmundTheSeaMonster

BarbaraBallard

He had me at "Daft"

crap-action-jackson

M.A.S.

Anyone with a pulse that is ever interested in gadgets (and if you are reading this blog then likely you are) can tell that the cell phone market needs an innovative approach. What surprises me is that this young guy seems to know more than the execs. That is dumb.

thegadgeteer

MrBlahBlah

boom.

exactly.

this is apple's philosohy, this is why they have been so successful in the marketplace

MrBlahBlah

But it's sort of weird that his writing lacks some polish or belies a lack of business communications skills. I bet he's kept in a lot of dark closets wherever he works because he doesn't know how to play nice, or might have some kind of chip on his shoulder/axe to grind, etc.

jcy

Motorola got greedy with the RAZR and dilluted its stature so much that even my grandfather had one. It feels like typical large-company attitude to absolutely milk a product until its dead. What the heck was the Moto RnD team doing during the success of the RAZR? I'm sure whatever they were developing came from upper-command. The greed is so obvious.

Moordryd

92BuickLeSabre

The ultimate in social networking phone gizmos!

GiltProto

That sort of personality is a vital part to grow a business, rather than simply coast.

Cobolman2

Thanks!

TonyRockyHorror

getz76

Ob1masterjd26

openfly

Or is this a fake?

BarbaraBallard

Red3y3Ninja

kp

KernelPanic

digodemais

managers KILL every fine company because they just want too much money for their own!

It's everywhere in the world: US, Europe, Asia ...

And when they destroyed a company they got 50.000.000 Dollar as a gift, too.

I can't understand this ...

T.W.G

flyboy

DrifterTypeR

DrifterTypeR

G_Money

demonspawn2578

duckballs

Monty

Sounds like a self-important kid who happened to work for a very smart guy.

DiddyBear

ripfire4

FuzzysFriedChicken

G_Money

ClemClone

Motorola's clearly not going to get anywhere by trying for an iPhone killer, but that doesn't mean that they can't fix the things that they are missing: Decent featurephones, good software, and proper Internet functionality.

Me? I don't give a rat's ass about Facebook/MySpace/YouTube on my phone, but apparently, some kids *do.* Take a gamble on that, and see what you can get out of it. Don't be afraid to render last year's hot new handset obsolete this year. You can't milk the RAZR design forever, after all. Try something crazy. Release a QWERTY-based messaging device that is also a phone, not the other way around. Spread yourself a little thin, it's not like you have much left to lose.

It's a little disturbing that Motorola has fallen so far from their older mission statements, and I do have to question if they have any chance at all of recovering from this current collapse.

RaptorCK

kalfeer

Mayor McRib

CruJones

slapBOXmaster

LJN

zhaviensdad