Motorola’s Ron Garriques has abruptly left the company to take a new job running Dell’s consumer unit. This is significant because Garriques was Executive VP in charge of Motorola’s mobile devices business, and he was widely credited with building Motorola’s strong position in the last 18 months – in particular, he was strongly identified with the commercially successful RAZR.
Dell presumably hopes that he can do a similar job on Dell’s product line for non-business users; consumers represent less than 15% of the PC company’s sales, and Dell could do with some of that RAZR sharpness.
But in any case Garrigues was probably starting to feel the heat at Motorola – sticky Q4 sales, profit margins slipping, no follow-on for the RAZR, only moderate reviews and sales for the current crop of phones.
Certainly Motorola announced his departure in spectacularly curt fashion via a two-line statement, with a spokesperson subsequently confirming that “All I can tell you is that he resigned and we did not make a counteroffer to retain him”. Doesn’t sound like they tried too hard to keep him, does it ...
But in any case Garrigues was probably starting to feel the heat at Motorola – sticky Q4 sales, profit margins slipping, no follow-on for the RAZR, only moderate reviews and sales for the current crop of phones.
Certainly Motorola announced his departure in spectacularly curt fashion via a two-line statement, with a spokesperson subsequently confirming that “All I can tell you is that he resigned and we did not make a counteroffer to retain him”. Doesn’t sound like they tried too hard to keep him, does it ...