Razr’s Blinding Success Hid “Brutal Reality” At Motorola: “

Sometimes it’s a company’s inability to turn out unique products that sends sales slipping—case in point, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC). But for Motorola (NYSE: MOT), it was having a hit product—the slim, shiny Razr—that started the company on its downward spiral. The success of the Razr, once the hottest selling cellphone, was so ‘blinding,’ that it masked the ‘brutal reality’ that more work had to be done, according to co-CEO Greg Brown in a rueful sounding interview with Businessweek.

Brown, who at one point refers to the Razr as a ‘one-trick pony,’ goes into detail as to what wrong at Motorola: ‘…we developed an unhealthy hubris that manifested itself in us thinking we knew what was best for customers, as opposed to listening in an unfiltered and unemotional way to what customers were telling us. It’s particularly noteworthy on the mobile-devices side. We should have been more in tune with the customer experience instead of focusing on form factors [the physical shape of the phone]. We didn’t adapt with the right level of speed and customer input to where the puck was going.’

Businessweek tries its best to get Brown to pin the blame for the decline at the mobile devices division on former chief Ed Zander, but, Brown known as a careful speaker, sidesteps this by saying, ‘Businesses are only as good as the leadership running those businesses.’ So yes, Zander, known for his outbursts like, ‘Screw the Nano!’ is to blame, just that Brown won’t badmouth him.

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(Via mocoNews.net.)