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Top 5 Wireless Executives to Watch in 2009
Top 5 Wireless Executives to Watch in 2009:
Today's current economic climate is extremely challenging for any wireless executive, particularly those that are tasked with building out a new nationwide network, turning around a struggling company or heading up a government agency that has numerous controversial initiatives hanging in limbo.
We considered all these factors and more when we made our selection of the top five wireless executives to watch in 2009. Clearly there are many wireless executives doing great things in tough times. But we think these five people will have to make some particularly tough decisions in the coming year that will have a long-lasting impact on the companies and agencies that they run as well as the entire wireless industry.
As always, your feedback is encouraged and appreciated. Please keep in mind that FierceWireless primarily covers the U.S. wireless industry so our selections are U.S.-based wireless executives. -Sue
Top 5 Wireless Executives to Watch in 2009
Comments
Posted by Anonymous | January 22, 2009 - 4:54pm
Sue
The best person to watch in 2009 is you: Cute and often predicting things incorrectly
Posted by The Crawling Eye | January 26, 2009 - 10:33am
Mr. Jha holds an unenviable job.
His task is Herculean - turning around Motorola Devices. And he faces limited choices.
The recession grips deep and prolonged. And, the 2010 global economic recovery appears a mirage. Currencies gyrate, and a strong dollar rises. Within the mobile telephone industry, 2009 unit shipments wilt.
And Motorola unit shipments drop like a brick…from 65 million units per quarter in Q4 2006 to 19 million in Q4 2008… and falling. And, so revenues shrink and operating losses carry on.
At Motorola Devices, job cuts do not keep pace with the fall in unit shipments and revenues. Profits are elusive. Losses run faster than expense cuts, like a run away nuclear reactor contaminating the rest of Motorola.
Once a chip design engineer rising to COO at Qualcomm, Mr. Jha is now reduced to a butcher.
Mr. Jha’s choices are limited. With a reduced number of products, intense competition, and a hobbling global economy, he has no alternative but to cut Devices employees and expenses to halt operating losses. Devices’ losses offset profits from Motorola’s other businesses, sucking cash from the balance sheet, and dragging down its stock. Its debt rates as junk.
But, don’t blame Mr. Jha. He has been on the job six months. He mops up the mess. And, he sacrifices his own compensation, setting a worthy example – amongst American corporate executives, that is a rarity.
If you are an inquisitor searching for culprits about Devices’ woes, begin with Motorola’s 2003 board of directors. The board ousted Chris Galvin for Ed Zander. With no experience in mobile telephones, Mr. Zander simply did not understand the mobile telephone business. While learning through on the job training, Mr. Zander presided over a parade of lumbering managers, feuding clans, too many operating systems, and array of overlapping products at Devices, as competition squeezed its weaknesses.
A Shakespearean tragedy, the story will appear as a business case study in management school. It’s not story about a soured economy. It’s a story about mismanagement.
If Devices survives, it will be Lilliputian. Once the world’s giant in mobile telephones, Motorola Devices shrinks into a tiny character. And it hopes for shooting star, like a DynaTac, StarTac, or RAZR.
If Mr. Jha slashes the operating losses at Devices, Mr. Jha will have done his job, sparing the rest of Motorola from its calamity.
Being the butcher of Libertyville is a necessary, but unenviable job.
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