Blog: John Myers

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Go BIG or Go Home

While I firmly believe in the concept of building a sound foundation of a broad-based products, I found a recent announcement by Motorola to be a great example of a public company that has decided to bow to "Wall Street" pressures rather than making sound long-term business decisions.

By cutting their R&D budget by 15%, Motorola is being penny-wise and pound foolish. It is no secret that Motorola has been playing catch-up in the mobile handset market with Nokia and now Apple for the past couple of years. And now they have decided to cut down on their investment in new products?!?!?! Nice... Perhaps, Motorola should follow the advice of two of my favorite bosses:

GO BIG or go home…

It might be the case that Motorola is spending those reduced dollars in the right product development direction ( and my cynicism is unfounded… ), but I would say this decision and announcement has more to do with what some pencil pushing Wall Street analyst decided than it does with getting Motorola back on top of the handset market.

In my opinion, Motorola should be investing in new products to catch up with at least Nokia because it is possible that Apple is too far ahead already. That investment should be an increase of R&D spending not a reduction.

Technorati Tags: Telecommunications, Telecom, Motorola

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