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Technology Stocks : Motorola (MOT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dragonfly who wrote (1227)	6/16/1998 10:12:00 PM
From: Lazlo Pierce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3436

Dragon<<This management has proven its incompetence time and time again. It seems to me that a few years of lackluster performance equals incompetance to you.>> ************************************* With LU, Erickson, and Nokia eating MOT's lunch, they are now at a disadvantge. It is my belief that present management isn't up to the task of coming from behind, when they couldn't function with a lead. We'll see. You may be right. I may be wrong. That is the beauty of the market. It takes both sides to make a trade. I wish you well. As a little sidenote, Feb. 97, my sister bought Mot @ 60, I bought Nokia @ 60 (pre-split). I got her to sell after their earnings warning last Oct, after trying to get her to sell the previous few months. IMHO MOT will see 40 before it sees 60. Dave

To: Dragonfly who wrote (1227)	6/17/1998 5:36:00 AM
From: tero kuittinen	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 3436

Time: 1990. Place: Schaumburg, Illinois. Agenda: the corporate strategy of Motorola for the next ten years. 1 Analog phones will rule the market for the foreseeable future... let's bet the ranch on them! Our company has 60% of the global market share, so we can pretty much dictate when the transition to digital standard takes place. Since our strength lies in miniaturizing analog phones and profit margins are fatter here, we would be stupid to move to digital models now. Our only competition comes from obscure European countries with no high-tech expertise. These two companies have less than 5% of global market share each, and lack brand awareness south of polar circle. We just ignore them and they will go away! 2 Since analog phones do not receive text messages, let's bet on pagers, too! There's going to be huuuuuge growth in Asia. Digital phones that might render pagers obsolete weigh over 300 grams and cost mucho dinero. Who's gonna drive down the prices of digital models and make phones smaller, if we concentrate on analog phones? Nobody! Motorola, numbah ONE! 3 We have already bet the future of one of America's most admired, distinguished companies on analog phones... let's go crazy and follow that model in our network division as well! We won't develop a good digital switch or purchase one... we won't be needing that, since analog rules, anyway. 4 Since analog rules, we'll just ignore this ludicrous SGM or whatever it is... it's not like a European socialistic-bureacratic standard is going to rack up 100 million subscribers by 1998! Heh heh... those whale blubber eaters... 5. And here's the kicker! We'll develop a satellite phone before millennium! It's gonna be cool and huge and expensive and underpowered... and people are going to lap it up! After all, there will be no serious competition from land-based digital phones. Our dismissive attitude will have stunted the development of these. We don't have to worry about the cost of the phone, either. Haven't you heard that "Motorola" is synonymous to "mobile phone" in Chinese? I read that in Reader's Digest. Since we have the world's only global brand in this business, we can always demand a premium price for our products. I mean, Motorola has the same cachet as "Ferrari". People will pay just for the logo. ****************************** "Profiling" is most often used to recreate the thought patterns of psychotic serial killers. But I believe it is also useful in dissecting criminal corporate stupidity. OK, let's step back to 1998 now. That one misguided conception (Motorola will force consumers to stay with analog phones) led to half a dozen disastrous strategic decisions. Huge spending on analog phone R&D, big bet on pagers, neglect of digital network sales, etc, etc. They are all bastard children spawned by that mother of all errors in judgement. And now arrives Iridium, the keystone in that cathedral of miscalculations. Designed for the world that never came to be. Arriving to a marketplace that is alien and hostile to Motorola, a marketplace that is completely at odds with the premises that Iridium was based on. It's a new product, so it is impossible to predict th consumer response accurately. But it can be stated that the strategic reasoning and marketing know-how behind Iridium is the same that drove Motorola's handset and network divisions into ground. regards, Tero