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Top 5 Wireless Executives to Watch in 2009 - Where are they now?

Let's take a look at the 2009 wireless executives to watch and see where they are today. Click here for the full 2009 report. And make sure to check out the rising stars of 2010.

  1. Ben Wolff, CEO of Clearwire. In March 2009, Wolff was moved to co-chairman of Clearwire along with Craig McCaw, and replaced as CEO by Bill Morrow, a former Vodafone executive. As co-chairman Wolff continued to play a visible role at Clearwire and even was a keynote speaker at the CTIA Wireless 2009 conference. But in December 2009, Wolff moved to a new Craig McCaw venture, ICO Global Communications, where he became chairman and CEO. Wolff is expected to serve as CEO on an interim basis until a new CEO is found. He remains president of Eagle River group of investments and is still a member of the board of directors of CTIA.
  2. Julius Genachowski, chairman of the FCC. Last year when we predicted Genachowski would be a force to watch in 2009, we had no idea just how strong his stance would be on net neutrality and other wireless regulatory issues. In October, the Genachowski-led FCC approved preliminary net neutrality rules that maintain that wireless carriers must provide access to content, applications and services as well as provide customers with the ability to connect any device to the network. Although the FCC did acknowledge that wireless networks are not the same as wired networks, the commission has yet to provide details on how it plans to proceed with its net neutrality regulations. Although much is still uncertain on how the net neutrality issue will unfold, it's clear Genachowski is a force of change at the FCC.
  3. Lee Williams, executive director of Symbian. A year ago Williams had just been named the head of the newly created Symbian Foundation, a non-profit initiative to oversee the Symbian platform as it evolves into an open-source operating system. To say that 2009 was a tough year for Williams and Symbian is probably an understatement. Although Symbian is still considered the most successful operating system for smartphones, it is clearly losing ground to powerful new entrants such as Google's Android OS. However, things could be on the upswing for Symbian. The foundation announced earlier this week that has completed its first fully open OS platform (Symbian^3), which will be ready for release as early as next month, and it should have the Symbian^4 OS set to launch before the end of the year.
  4. Peter Chou, CEO of HTC. 2009 was a good year for HTC and for Peter Chou. The company released several high-profile phones and earned a reputation for being an innovator in the highly competitive smartphone space. Chou also has helped deepen HTC's ties with U.S. carriers. Today, HTC's products are heavily promoted by T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel and others.
  5. Sanjay Jha, co-CEO of Motorola. When we wrote about Jha at the beginning of 2009, he had only been at the helm of Motorola for a few months, having been lured away from Qualcomm in August 2008. No doubt 2009 was a tough year for Motorola, but thanks to Jha's persistence the company seems to be stronger. Jha made a bold bet in 2009 when he said the company would focus on Android-based phones and would launch its first Android phone in time for the 2009 holiday shopping season. It was a risky move but one that Motorola fulfilled when it announced the Cliq with T-Mobile USA in September and the Droid with Verizon Wireless in late October.