Motorola Mobility's (NYSE:MMI) top software executive for mobile devices, Christy Wyatt, will move to a more enterprise-focused role, a company spokeswoman confirmed.
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Motorola spokeswoman Juli Burda confirmed to FierceWireless that effective immediately, Wyatt, who has been corporate vice president of software and services product management, will instead be running the company's enterprise business for handsets as corporate vice president and general manager of enterprise. Wyatt was previously responsible for the strategy and planning of Motorola's mobile software platforms, services, applications and experiences and the development of strategic partnerships.
Dave Rothschild, previously Motorola's senior vice president of global software development and technologies for its mobile devices business, will take over Wyatt's old post.
"After over six years with Motorola in software leadership roles, we are pleased to announce that Christy Wyatt will now lead enterprise for our mobile devices business unit," Burda said. "Christy and her team will focus on solving real customer problems, such as critical IT device-policy management, enterprise security, productivity and content access and ensure the best products and solutions are available for mobile enterprise users around the world."
The personnel move is one of the most significant Motorola has made since Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced plans in August to acquire Motorola for $12.5 billion. Burda said the change is not related to Google's acquisition plans. Wyatt, who was named to FierceWireless' 2011 Most Influential Women in Wireless list (and is the only woman listed on Motorola's executive team page), will continue to report to Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha.
Before joining Motorola in 2005, Wyatt was Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) worldwide developer relations director, where she was responsible for partners, global alliances and evangelism. Prior to that she was senior director at PalmSource, where she helped grow the firm's developer community from 3,000 to 200,000 with more than 14,000 applications.
Motorola has been moving aggressively into the enterprise market with Android. "In enterprise, Android is gaining momentum by offering consumers and CIOs more choices," Jha said during the company's second-quarter earnings conference call, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. "We are supporting ongoing enterprise trails and expanding our ready for business portfolio of smartphones and Webtop-enabled accessories. Upcoming devices will include more comprehensive security features, device management and enterprise support capabilities."
Motorola has introduced three high-end smartphones--the Droid Bionic for Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ), Atrix for AT&T Mobility (NYSE:T) and the Photon for Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S)--which can be paired with a laptop dock and Motorola's Webtop experience to give users desktop access to their phone content, as well as a desktop browsing experience powered by Mozilla's Firefox browser. Jha said during the earnings call that Motorola plans on introducing two tiers of laptop docks, one that is cheaper for consumers and other that is more expensive with more of an emphasis on advanced capabilities for enterprises.
Jha also noted that with Motorola's February acquisition of 3LM, which Motorola licenses to other Android handset makers, the company is leading in mobile device management for the platform. Motorola also intends to explore integrating videoconferencing capabilities with Polycom and others.
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