Motorola introduced its first smartphone based on Google's Android software, in a move that's key to the company's goal of regaining its place among the world's top cellphone manufacturers.
The device, dubbed the Cliq, will first be made available later this year in the US through T-Mobile. The touch-screen phone will run a new service from Motorola called MotoBlur, which synchronises all user messages and contacts, Motorola chief executive Sanjay Jha said at the Mobilize conference in San Francisco.
"MotoBlur makes text, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter feeds and photos from sources like MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo and corporate e-mail appear in a single stream and sync them together with no different logins," Jha said. "This means you can focus on what people have said instead of how and where they said it."
The Cliq will feature a full, slide-out keyboard, a 5-megapixel camera and access to all the Google programmes and applications available for the company's Android platform.
The phone will be called the Dext in markets outside the U.S. and will launch in France, Britain and Latin America later in the year, Jha said. No pricing was available for the device.
Analysts said the integration of social networking into phones could give Motorola and other manufacturers a foot in the door in their battle to challenge the iPhone as the world's dominant smartphone.
Motorola has been especially hard hit by the move to smartphones, selling just 18.8 million handsets in the most recent quarter, down from 28.1 million a year ago. Earlier this decade, the company's Razr was the world's most popular cellphone.
Jha said that Motorola was now refocused on producing cutting-edge mobile devices. He said the Cliq was crucial to the company's recovery.
"It's a very important starting point for us," Jha said. "I see smartphones as the future of computing. If it doesn't fit in your pocket, I don't think it's going to be a relevant device."
Agencies
Showing posts with label Sanjay Jha. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sanjay Jha. Show all posts
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
Make-or-break bet for Motorola as it takes on Android
Motorola Inc needs to spark some serious gadget lust next week when it unveils new phones to convince consumers and Wall Street that it's still a player in the global mobile industry, but the odds may be heavily stacked against it.
After losing market share for years, Motorola has made what is viewed as a make-or-break bet on Google Inc's Android mobile software, hoping the partnership with the giant Web company can help it win back customers.
Shares of the one-time market leader, now ranked fourth in global handset sales, jumped 11 percent earlier this week on investor hopes that the new phones could generate enough excitement to make Motorola's bat-wing logo famous again.
But while no one is expecting an iPhone-killer at the San Francisco unveiling on September 10, analysts say the risk is still that the new phones will not be unique enough to wow consumers, especially when other vendors also sell Android phones. "Early devices will not be significantly differentiated and could disappoint those playing the 9/10 launch," said Macquarie Research analyst Phil Cusick, who expects Motorola to display two new Android phones that day.
Motorola has given few details about the announcement, which will come during Co-Chief Executive Sanjay Jha's keynote at GigaOm's mobile conference. Jha first revealed his plans for creating Android phones in October.
He has said the new phones will be integrated with popular online social networks; but rivals such as Apple Inc, Research in Motion Ltd, HTC Corp and Palm Inc already have features for services like Facebook.
Shareholders have been impressed enough with Jha that they have more than doubled Motorola's share price since May. Still, the stock is down 70 percent from its 2006 peak of $26 and has been trading below $8 per share. "It's going to be extremely significant to the company's future," said Current Analysis analyst Avi Greengart. "If the phone does well, they live to fight another day."
Comparisons will inevitably be drawn to Palm's Pre phone unveiling, which was also seen as a last chance for that company. Pre reception was good and caused Palm's share price to quadruple, in part on the perception that the company has become a more attractive takeover target.
Should the initial reaction to Motorola's devices be as strong, the company could have a good chance of luring back consumers, investors and mobile service providers, analysts say.
PRETTY HARDWARE
Motorola turned to Google for phone software because its own strength has been in hardware. This was demonstrated by the Razr, whose slim form inspired imitations for two years before it started to fall out of favor in late 2006.
Analysts expect Motorola's new phones to have stylish enough hardware to secure distribution by mobile carriers, but the question is whether the software will be different enough to spur holiday season sales -- especially when the bar has been set very high by Apple's iPhone and the thousands of apps available for download from Apple's online store.
"Short-term, Motorola needs to win the purchase decision of specific carriers," Greengart said. "Long-term, they're going to need to do something more than selling pretty hardware running an operating system other competitors have access to."
Motorola's Jha has said several times that carriers were impressed with the Android phones. He told Reuters in a recent interview that he was encouraged when one operator executive told him "bat-wings are back."
Analysts expect Motorola Android phones to be sold by Verizon Wireless, owned by Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc, and by T-Mobile USA, owned by Deutsche Telekom AG. But Verizon said it is not involved in Motorola's announcement next week. T-Mobile said it will launch new Android phones this year but declined to give details.
Even if carriers did back the phone, some of Motorola's former shareholders say they would be wary of betting on the company unless it started to show sustainable improvements.
"I wouldn't touch the stock until they've launched three, four or five phones and they've gained market share for at least a year," said Jane Snorek, an analyst for First American Funds, which manages $35 billion in equities that used to include Motorola shares.
Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff said he is impressed by Jha but agreed that investors should look beyond September 10. "If you get to several phones and they're all disappointing, then you have to start writing the obituary. I don't see that," said Modoff. He said he will focus on the reaction from young consumers who crave cool gadgets: "We'll see what the 20-year-olds think. That's what really matters."
Agencies
After losing market share for years, Motorola has made what is viewed as a make-or-break bet on Google Inc's Android mobile software, hoping the partnership with the giant Web company can help it win back customers.
Shares of the one-time market leader, now ranked fourth in global handset sales, jumped 11 percent earlier this week on investor hopes that the new phones could generate enough excitement to make Motorola's bat-wing logo famous again.
But while no one is expecting an iPhone-killer at the San Francisco unveiling on September 10, analysts say the risk is still that the new phones will not be unique enough to wow consumers, especially when other vendors also sell Android phones. "Early devices will not be significantly differentiated and could disappoint those playing the 9/10 launch," said Macquarie Research analyst Phil Cusick, who expects Motorola to display two new Android phones that day.
Motorola has given few details about the announcement, which will come during Co-Chief Executive Sanjay Jha's keynote at GigaOm's mobile conference. Jha first revealed his plans for creating Android phones in October.
He has said the new phones will be integrated with popular online social networks; but rivals such as Apple Inc, Research in Motion Ltd, HTC Corp and Palm Inc already have features for services like Facebook.
Shareholders have been impressed enough with Jha that they have more than doubled Motorola's share price since May. Still, the stock is down 70 percent from its 2006 peak of $26 and has been trading below $8 per share. "It's going to be extremely significant to the company's future," said Current Analysis analyst Avi Greengart. "If the phone does well, they live to fight another day."
Comparisons will inevitably be drawn to Palm's Pre phone unveiling, which was also seen as a last chance for that company. Pre reception was good and caused Palm's share price to quadruple, in part on the perception that the company has become a more attractive takeover target.
Should the initial reaction to Motorola's devices be as strong, the company could have a good chance of luring back consumers, investors and mobile service providers, analysts say.
PRETTY HARDWARE
Motorola turned to Google for phone software because its own strength has been in hardware. This was demonstrated by the Razr, whose slim form inspired imitations for two years before it started to fall out of favor in late 2006.
Analysts expect Motorola's new phones to have stylish enough hardware to secure distribution by mobile carriers, but the question is whether the software will be different enough to spur holiday season sales -- especially when the bar has been set very high by Apple's iPhone and the thousands of apps available for download from Apple's online store.
"Short-term, Motorola needs to win the purchase decision of specific carriers," Greengart said. "Long-term, they're going to need to do something more than selling pretty hardware running an operating system other competitors have access to."
Motorola's Jha has said several times that carriers were impressed with the Android phones. He told Reuters in a recent interview that he was encouraged when one operator executive told him "bat-wings are back."
Analysts expect Motorola Android phones to be sold by Verizon Wireless, owned by Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc, and by T-Mobile USA, owned by Deutsche Telekom AG. But Verizon said it is not involved in Motorola's announcement next week. T-Mobile said it will launch new Android phones this year but declined to give details.
Even if carriers did back the phone, some of Motorola's former shareholders say they would be wary of betting on the company unless it started to show sustainable improvements.
"I wouldn't touch the stock until they've launched three, four or five phones and they've gained market share for at least a year," said Jane Snorek, an analyst for First American Funds, which manages $35 billion in equities that used to include Motorola shares.
Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff said he is impressed by Jha but agreed that investors should look beyond September 10. "If you get to several phones and they're all disappointing, then you have to start writing the obituary. I don't see that," said Modoff. He said he will focus on the reaction from young consumers who crave cool gadgets: "We'll see what the 20-year-olds think. That's what really matters."
Agencies
Friday, December 26, 2008
Techies bidding farewell in 2008
It's time to bid adieu to the year 2008, the year which witnessed the farewells of some of the biggest names in the technology world -- some of the marking the end of an era.
While most of these were ceremonious exits with some moving to take up their passions or philanthropy, others in pursuit of greener pastures. There were also some unceremonious exits, where some CEOs were made to resign penalising them for falling revenues and constant battering of their company's stocks at the bourses.
Here's looking into some of the most high-profile exits of 2008:
Arun Sarin, Vodafone
One of the most successful CEOs of British telecom giant Vodafone, Arun Sarin, quit the company in the July 2008 to don a new challenge.
During his five year tenure at the world's largest mobile firm, Sarin is credited for acquiring a controlling stake in one of India's biggest mobile phone companies, Hutchison Essar. Under him Vodafone posted group revenue of 35.5 billion pounds for the year ending March 31, an increase of 14.1 per cent, and organic growth of 4.2 per cent. This came in marginally higher than market consensus, provided by the company, of 35.2 billion to 35.4 billion pounds.
Under Sarin, Vodafone expanded aggressively into emerging markets, including Romania, the Czech Republic and Turkey. Sarin visited India before his exit along with his successor to participate in Vodafone-Essar board meeting, triggering speculation that he may join Tatas, but officials of the Indian conglomerate debunked any such report.
Post-exit Sarin planned a trekking trip to Himalayas before settling in California. Recently, Sarin, 53, who quit Vodafone at the pinnacle of his career, was speculated to be the most sought-after contender for the position of Yahoo CEO, after the Jerry Yang's exit.
Sarin, however, said he was not keen on the position. Sarin is looking at alternative roles at other US public companies as well as at a private equity firm, the Financial Times wrote recently.
The India-born US citizen is an IIT Kharagpur alumnus and has an MBA degree from University of California, Berkley.
Bill Gates, Microsoft
This was surely the biggest farewell of 2008. The exit of Bill Gates marked an end of era. Gates retired from Microsoft, the company he co-founded with college-friend Paul Allen in 1975.
In June, Gates quit as full-time chairman and software architect of the world's largest software company to work full-time at his charitable organisation Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates will remain the company's non-executive chairman.
A Harvard College drop out, Gates has been a permanent fixture in the Forbes Richest people list, holding the numero uno slot for 15 years in a row between 1993 and 2007. In 2008, Gates was topped by investor Warren Buffett and Mexico's telecom tycoon Carlos Slim in the world's wealthiest list.
Bill Gates' key creation is Microsoft, a company with sales of $51 billion as of June 2007 with 78,000 employees across 105 countries. Almost 90 per cent of the estimated 1 billion computers (desktop and laptop) in the world run on Microsoft's Windows and Office. The company has products across the layers network, operating system, database, middleware, application software.
Gates departure comes at a time when Microsoft is engaged in an escalating rivalry with Google and other competitors who are using the internet to chip away at its software dominance.
During his recent visit to India, Gates launched a major initiative for India’s public healthcare with a special focus on eradicating polio.
Jerry Yang, Yahoo
After a rocky tenure at Yahoo, co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down as chief executive this November.
Among the Silicon Valley dotcom billionaires, Yang was named CEO in June 2007 after Terry Semel exit. As CEO, Yang struggled to turn around the company's dwindling fortunes. The rejection of Microsoft offer and a failed advertising deal with Google marred his brief tenure.
Earlier this year, Yang rejected a $33 per share offer by Microsoft for Yahoo worth a total of more than $47 billion. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer later withdrew the offer after Yang sought $37 per share. The negotiating breakdown triggered a shareholder revolt led by billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who called for Yang's ouster in July. Since then Yahoo has been trading at between $10-12 a share.
With a fortune estimated at $2.23 billion, some shareholders accused Yang of putting his personal affection for the company he created over the interests of its shareholders. After squandering the opportunity to sell to Microsoft, Yang tried to boost Yahoo's profit by forging an advertising partnership with Google. But this backup plan too fell when Google walked away from the deal to avoid a court battle with the US Justice Department, which concluded that the partnership may throttle competition in the online advertising market.
Sanjay Jha, Qualcomm
Indian engineering whizkid Sanjay Jha left Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT) group as COO and president this year to join beleaguered US telecom major Motorola as CEO of Mobile Devices.
At Motorola, Jha holds a key task to pull the American cellphone pioneer which slipped to the fourth position in global handset sales and the downslide has been quite sharp.
What top's Jha's priorities is reversing the fortunes of the company’s loss-making handset business -- comprising over one third of Motorola’s total business worth $36.6 billion.
Forty five-year-old Jha started as a senior engineer at Qualcomm VLSI (very large scale integration) group in 1994 and was promoted as senior vice-president of engineering in 1998.
He was elevated as the president of QCT in 2003 when the chipset and software division was started at Qualcomm. For the past five years, this division of Qualcomm has been ranked among the world's largest fabless semiconductor producers, and was rated as being ahead of the leader Texas Instruments last year. Qualcomm had sold its own CDMA cell phone business to Kyocera in February 2000.
Neelam Dhawan, Microsoft
Ending her three-and-a-half years stint as MD Microsoft India, Neelam Dhawan joined Hewlett-Packard India as its managing director in June.
At HP, 48-year-old Neelam holds key tasks of driving overall strategy, revenues and profitability for HP India. Currently she reports to Balu Doraisamy, MD, HP Asia Pacific & Japan.
During her tenure at Microsoft, she looked into the strategic focus and improved company's operating efficiency and execution, as well as its financial performance and customer focus.
Prior to Microsoft, Neelam worked with Compaq as head (Enterprise Sales) and HP as vice president (Customer Solutions Group). Under her leadership the Rs 16,000-crore Hewlett-Packard recently won a multi-million dollar Godrej outsourcing deal.
An economics graduate from St Stephen’s College Delhi, Neelam holds a masters in Business Administration from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University.
Lee Kun-hee, Samsung
In one of the most sensational and controversial exits of the year, Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee, resigned following an indictment on tax evasion charges after a counsel investigation.
Known to be the most powerful Korean tycoon, Lee was charged with $133m tax evasion and breach of trust during his 20-year tenure at Samsung. Lee was also charged with damaging the interest of other shareholders. He was accused of forcing Samsung subsidiaries to sell shares to his son at unfairly low prices.
However, the company was cleared of the most serious allegation that it raised money to bribe influential citizens and ministers in its native South Korea.
Joining Lee in stepping down were Vice Chairman Lee Hak-soo and Lee Jae-yong, the chairman's son and heir apparent to the Samsung throne. Nine other senior executives also left Samsung following the charges.
Sixty six-year old Lee is credited of having built $160-billion Samsung Group which is Korea Inc's pride, accounting for roughly 21 per cent of the country's total exports.
Ben Verwaayen, British Telecom
British Telecom Group, one of the largest telecommunications companies in Europe, saw the departure of its CEO Ben Verwaayen in the month of April.
Having served BT for almost six years, Verwaayen headed back to the US to take up a position with a venture capital firm. Verwaayen joined BT in January 2002 after quitting his job from US equipment vendor Lucent.
During his tenure at BT, Verwaayen initiated a complete broadband overhaul of BT's aging infrastructure. He mended fences with Ofcom, the UK's version of the FCC.
Fifty-six year old Dutch national was also awarded an honorary knighthood for services to the communications industry. Verwaayen helped BT buy a slew of US-based companies including Infonet, Radianz, Counterpane and INS pushing the telecom giant into a number of emerging markets.
Ian Livingston, who was chief executive of BT Retail, succeeded Verwaayen.
Farewell in the wings: Steve Jobs?
Apple recently announced that its Chief Executive Steve Jobs will not deliver the keynote address at the Macworld trade show next month. The announcement once again revived investors' concerns about the state of his health and sent the company's shares down.
Apple spokesman, however, denied that Jobs was missing the show due to health issues. Instead of Jobs, Philip Schiller, the senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, will deliver the keynote.
However, Samuel Wilson, an analyst at JMP Securities, said Jobs' absence at the event was important. "It's like the first time in a long time he hasn't spoken in Macworld. Why is he not speaking this year would be the question."
Investors have been concerned Jobs health after he was diagnosed with cancer some years back. In 2004, Jobs, 53, said he had undergone successful surgery to remove a rare type of pancreatic cancer. In September, Jobs, who is often perceived as irreplaceable as Apple's leader, appeared thin but jaunty as he introduced new iPod digital music players.
Macworld is a cultural event that draws thousands of Apple fans and technology aficionados to San Francisco, where they have been treated to major announcements from Jobs in past years, including the launch of the iPhone in 2007.
Source: Indiatimes Infotech
While most of these were ceremonious exits with some moving to take up their passions or philanthropy, others in pursuit of greener pastures. There were also some unceremonious exits, where some CEOs were made to resign penalising them for falling revenues and constant battering of their company's stocks at the bourses.
Here's looking into some of the most high-profile exits of 2008:
Arun Sarin, Vodafone
One of the most successful CEOs of British telecom giant Vodafone, Arun Sarin, quit the company in the July 2008 to don a new challenge.
During his five year tenure at the world's largest mobile firm, Sarin is credited for acquiring a controlling stake in one of India's biggest mobile phone companies, Hutchison Essar. Under him Vodafone posted group revenue of 35.5 billion pounds for the year ending March 31, an increase of 14.1 per cent, and organic growth of 4.2 per cent. This came in marginally higher than market consensus, provided by the company, of 35.2 billion to 35.4 billion pounds.
Under Sarin, Vodafone expanded aggressively into emerging markets, including Romania, the Czech Republic and Turkey. Sarin visited India before his exit along with his successor to participate in Vodafone-Essar board meeting, triggering speculation that he may join Tatas, but officials of the Indian conglomerate debunked any such report.
Post-exit Sarin planned a trekking trip to Himalayas before settling in California. Recently, Sarin, 53, who quit Vodafone at the pinnacle of his career, was speculated to be the most sought-after contender for the position of Yahoo CEO, after the Jerry Yang's exit.
Sarin, however, said he was not keen on the position. Sarin is looking at alternative roles at other US public companies as well as at a private equity firm, the Financial Times wrote recently.
The India-born US citizen is an IIT Kharagpur alumnus and has an MBA degree from University of California, Berkley.
Bill Gates, Microsoft
This was surely the biggest farewell of 2008. The exit of Bill Gates marked an end of era. Gates retired from Microsoft, the company he co-founded with college-friend Paul Allen in 1975.
In June, Gates quit as full-time chairman and software architect of the world's largest software company to work full-time at his charitable organisation Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates will remain the company's non-executive chairman.
A Harvard College drop out, Gates has been a permanent fixture in the Forbes Richest people list, holding the numero uno slot for 15 years in a row between 1993 and 2007. In 2008, Gates was topped by investor Warren Buffett and Mexico's telecom tycoon Carlos Slim in the world's wealthiest list.
Bill Gates' key creation is Microsoft, a company with sales of $51 billion as of June 2007 with 78,000 employees across 105 countries. Almost 90 per cent of the estimated 1 billion computers (desktop and laptop) in the world run on Microsoft's Windows and Office. The company has products across the layers network, operating system, database, middleware, application software.
Gates departure comes at a time when Microsoft is engaged in an escalating rivalry with Google and other competitors who are using the internet to chip away at its software dominance.
During his recent visit to India, Gates launched a major initiative for India’s public healthcare with a special focus on eradicating polio.
Jerry Yang, Yahoo
After a rocky tenure at Yahoo, co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down as chief executive this November.
Among the Silicon Valley dotcom billionaires, Yang was named CEO in June 2007 after Terry Semel exit. As CEO, Yang struggled to turn around the company's dwindling fortunes. The rejection of Microsoft offer and a failed advertising deal with Google marred his brief tenure.
Earlier this year, Yang rejected a $33 per share offer by Microsoft for Yahoo worth a total of more than $47 billion. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer later withdrew the offer after Yang sought $37 per share. The negotiating breakdown triggered a shareholder revolt led by billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who called for Yang's ouster in July. Since then Yahoo has been trading at between $10-12 a share.
With a fortune estimated at $2.23 billion, some shareholders accused Yang of putting his personal affection for the company he created over the interests of its shareholders. After squandering the opportunity to sell to Microsoft, Yang tried to boost Yahoo's profit by forging an advertising partnership with Google. But this backup plan too fell when Google walked away from the deal to avoid a court battle with the US Justice Department, which concluded that the partnership may throttle competition in the online advertising market.
Sanjay Jha, Qualcomm
Indian engineering whizkid Sanjay Jha left Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT) group as COO and president this year to join beleaguered US telecom major Motorola as CEO of Mobile Devices.
At Motorola, Jha holds a key task to pull the American cellphone pioneer which slipped to the fourth position in global handset sales and the downslide has been quite sharp.
What top's Jha's priorities is reversing the fortunes of the company’s loss-making handset business -- comprising over one third of Motorola’s total business worth $36.6 billion.
Forty five-year-old Jha started as a senior engineer at Qualcomm VLSI (very large scale integration) group in 1994 and was promoted as senior vice-president of engineering in 1998.
He was elevated as the president of QCT in 2003 when the chipset and software division was started at Qualcomm. For the past five years, this division of Qualcomm has been ranked among the world's largest fabless semiconductor producers, and was rated as being ahead of the leader Texas Instruments last year. Qualcomm had sold its own CDMA cell phone business to Kyocera in February 2000.
Neelam Dhawan, Microsoft
Ending her three-and-a-half years stint as MD Microsoft India, Neelam Dhawan joined Hewlett-Packard India as its managing director in June.
At HP, 48-year-old Neelam holds key tasks of driving overall strategy, revenues and profitability for HP India. Currently she reports to Balu Doraisamy, MD, HP Asia Pacific & Japan.
During her tenure at Microsoft, she looked into the strategic focus and improved company's operating efficiency and execution, as well as its financial performance and customer focus.
Prior to Microsoft, Neelam worked with Compaq as head (Enterprise Sales) and HP as vice president (Customer Solutions Group). Under her leadership the Rs 16,000-crore Hewlett-Packard recently won a multi-million dollar Godrej outsourcing deal.
An economics graduate from St Stephen’s College Delhi, Neelam holds a masters in Business Administration from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University.
Lee Kun-hee, Samsung
In one of the most sensational and controversial exits of the year, Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee, resigned following an indictment on tax evasion charges after a counsel investigation.
Known to be the most powerful Korean tycoon, Lee was charged with $133m tax evasion and breach of trust during his 20-year tenure at Samsung. Lee was also charged with damaging the interest of other shareholders. He was accused of forcing Samsung subsidiaries to sell shares to his son at unfairly low prices.
However, the company was cleared of the most serious allegation that it raised money to bribe influential citizens and ministers in its native South Korea.
Joining Lee in stepping down were Vice Chairman Lee Hak-soo and Lee Jae-yong, the chairman's son and heir apparent to the Samsung throne. Nine other senior executives also left Samsung following the charges.
Sixty six-year old Lee is credited of having built $160-billion Samsung Group which is Korea Inc's pride, accounting for roughly 21 per cent of the country's total exports.
Ben Verwaayen, British Telecom
British Telecom Group, one of the largest telecommunications companies in Europe, saw the departure of its CEO Ben Verwaayen in the month of April.
Having served BT for almost six years, Verwaayen headed back to the US to take up a position with a venture capital firm. Verwaayen joined BT in January 2002 after quitting his job from US equipment vendor Lucent.
During his tenure at BT, Verwaayen initiated a complete broadband overhaul of BT's aging infrastructure. He mended fences with Ofcom, the UK's version of the FCC.
Fifty-six year old Dutch national was also awarded an honorary knighthood for services to the communications industry. Verwaayen helped BT buy a slew of US-based companies including Infonet, Radianz, Counterpane and INS pushing the telecom giant into a number of emerging markets.
Ian Livingston, who was chief executive of BT Retail, succeeded Verwaayen.
Farewell in the wings: Steve Jobs?
Apple recently announced that its Chief Executive Steve Jobs will not deliver the keynote address at the Macworld trade show next month. The announcement once again revived investors' concerns about the state of his health and sent the company's shares down.
Apple spokesman, however, denied that Jobs was missing the show due to health issues. Instead of Jobs, Philip Schiller, the senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, will deliver the keynote.
However, Samuel Wilson, an analyst at JMP Securities, said Jobs' absence at the event was important. "It's like the first time in a long time he hasn't spoken in Macworld. Why is he not speaking this year would be the question."
Investors have been concerned Jobs health after he was diagnosed with cancer some years back. In 2004, Jobs, 53, said he had undergone successful surgery to remove a rare type of pancreatic cancer. In September, Jobs, who is often perceived as irreplaceable as Apple's leader, appeared thin but jaunty as he introduced new iPod digital music players.
Macworld is a cultural event that draws thousands of Apple fans and technology aficionados to San Francisco, where they have been treated to major announcements from Jobs in past years, including the launch of the iPhone in 2007.
Source: Indiatimes Infotech
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Motorola bosses take 25% pay cut
Motorola Inc, the second-biggest US seller of mobile phones, will freeze US pension plans and reduce executive salaries to help cope with the economic slump.
Co-Chief Executive Officers Greg Brown and Sanjay Jha are taking a 25 per cent cut in base salary in 2009, Motorola said in a statement. Employees in many markets won’t get a raise, and the company will temporarily stop making matching contributions to US workers’ retirement investment accounts.
Jha, hired in August to lead the wireless device division, seeks to turn around a unit that has posted operating losses of $2.8 billion since the start of 2007. He tapped Google Inc to supply software for phones after losing market share to Samsung Electronics Inc and Apple Inc, whose iPhone 3G topped Motorola’s Razr in the third quarter as the most popular US phone.
“Turnarounds are always hard to execute on, and a bad economy makes them tougher,” said Tavis McCourt, an analyst at Morgan Keegan & Co in Nashville. “I’d be shocked if this is all they do in 2009.”
The pay cuts and pension freeze will help Motorola add to the $800 million in annual costs savings it announced in October, including 3,000 job cuts, the company said.
Worldwide mobile-phone sales will drop 13 per cent next year, the first decline since 2001, as economic growth slows, analysts at Citigroup Inc said in a research note.
Motorola, based in Schaumburg, Illinois, rose 5 cents, or 1.1 per cent, to $4.46 at 12:07 pm in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares had dropped 73 per cent this year before today.
Source: Agencies
Co-Chief Executive Officers Greg Brown and Sanjay Jha are taking a 25 per cent cut in base salary in 2009, Motorola said in a statement. Employees in many markets won’t get a raise, and the company will temporarily stop making matching contributions to US workers’ retirement investment accounts.
Jha, hired in August to lead the wireless device division, seeks to turn around a unit that has posted operating losses of $2.8 billion since the start of 2007. He tapped Google Inc to supply software for phones after losing market share to Samsung Electronics Inc and Apple Inc, whose iPhone 3G topped Motorola’s Razr in the third quarter as the most popular US phone.
“Turnarounds are always hard to execute on, and a bad economy makes them tougher,” said Tavis McCourt, an analyst at Morgan Keegan & Co in Nashville. “I’d be shocked if this is all they do in 2009.”
The pay cuts and pension freeze will help Motorola add to the $800 million in annual costs savings it announced in October, including 3,000 job cuts, the company said.
Worldwide mobile-phone sales will drop 13 per cent next year, the first decline since 2001, as economic growth slows, analysts at Citigroup Inc said in a research note.
Motorola, based in Schaumburg, Illinois, rose 5 cents, or 1.1 per cent, to $4.46 at 12:07 pm in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares had dropped 73 per cent this year before today.
Source: Agencies
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