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Ticked-off former Motorola 'insider' gives his two cents

'If only you had listened to me'

An individual claiming to be a former advisor to deceased Motorola CMO Geoffrey Frost has attacked the mobe giant's management, accusing them of missed opportunities and closed minds.

A letter attributed to a Numair Faraz, published by Engadget, lays into both existing and outgoing management. Faraz claims responsibility for the RAZR handset as well as seeing the threat from Samsung back in 2003, and trying desperately to push the company towards social networking applications before the rest of the world had heard of them.

At that time, he claims, he was ignored by Ed Zander, the then CEO of the company, whom Faraz accuses of working Frost to death in 2005 while worrying more about golf scores than company profitability. Now, Faraz writes, he is being ignored by Ed Zander's replacement Greg Brown, and resorted to the open letter in the hope of communicating his ideas.

Those ideas include appointing a strong CEO to manage the newly-forming mobile division, and embracing Android as a single platform. He also recommends signing up the band Daft Punk whose music, apparently, appeals to everyone in the world regardless of age and demographic.

In recent weeks many Motorola employees have been keen to explain why the company is failing, and what they believe should have been done, but few have been so public about it. Faraz has some insight into the workings of Motorola and takes the failure of the company personally - though in common with every other Motorola employee we've spoken to, he takes no responsibility for that failure.

It's hard to imagine how the management at Motorola could be deaf to every employee screaming at them to get a decent software strategy, but such things are possible. As Faraz modestly puts it: "I was there when Motorola's handset division was brought back from the brink of death five years ago. Follow my advice, and we can do it again." ®

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