InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

[jimmylee]

IMO, Brown sounds like he may be more ready for a license than Zander.

New MOT CEO aims to "WOW" markets, and quickly:

Dec. 9---- Back when Greg Brown was running a San Francisco-based software company, he did some career plotting. He knew he wanted to move to a large public company, and he knew that Motorola had a reputation for hiring smart people as well as a strong legacy.

Here's what he did next:

"I wanted to be part of this organization," Brown said. "I took it upon myself, picked up the phone and called the CEO."

The somewhat brash act won Brown a position in early 2003 as division president, two levels below Christopher Galvin, the grandson of Motorola's founder. Brown thrived under Galvin's successor, Edward Zander, and now he is set to take the reins himself as CEO of the Schaumburg-based technology giant on Jan. 1.

At Motorola, Brown has been known more for steady work than busting down doors. But he will need to shake things up. He has to restore profitability, revive an ailing stock price and regain market share in mobile handsets -- all while facing pressure from shareholders like Carl Icahn to break up the company.

Brown, 47, who ascended from division chief to president and chief operating officer in four years, acknowledges that he doesn't have the luxury of time to turn around Motorola.

His strategy, he said in an interview conducted via e-mail last week, is to wow the markets with a strong lineup of mobile devices in 2008 and to spark a new sense of urgency into research and development.

"I plan to draw on the talent already here and infuse the organization with new people as well -- to enhance Motorola's profitability, expand our product portfolio, and create value for our shareholders," Brown wrote in an e-mail to the Tribune. "A fresh perspective, along with the right team, can create momentum and results."

Brown said he believes that the crucial battlefront in mobile handsets won't be fought with flashy design, but with functionality. This view aligns with that of many industry analysts, who note that consumers are demanding more from their cell phones, including the capacity to handle intensive media content like video and music; the ability to surf the Web as easily as on a home computer; and the power to link to other devices like digital cameras and televisions.

Undoubtedly, Brown will draw on his software background, having spent nearly three years as CEO of Micromuse, a San Francisco firm that specialized in software for businesses and was acquired by IBM in early 2006.

"Micromuse was a software company, and software is critical to Motorola's future," Brown said. "In handsets -- like in any product -- design, quality and reliability are all key, but I believe that software will be an even more important driver of Motorola's success."

Brown also said, "You have to focus on the markets you can compete and win."

Much of Motorola's fate rests with the mobile division, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of revenues and brought in $27 billion in the first nine months of the year. One thing Brown said he's learned at Motorola is that "talent is crucial." He pointed out last week that in the past few months, while he's been president, the company replaced half of the leadership positions in the mobile devices unit.

Brown takes over for Zander, who announced his retirement earlier this month as chief executive after a tenure that started well but turned troubled after the hot-selling Razr phone cooled and Motorola didn't have an equally successful follow-up. Zander will remain as chairman through May 2008 and serve as "strategic adviser" to Brown, whom Zander tagged as his successor two years ago.

Zander's strategy was "seamless mobility," or making equipment that would allow consumers to easily transport digital content -- for example, watching a television show at home and then transferring it to a hand-held device without interruption. Brown seems inclined to continue on that track.

To accomplish seamless mobility, Motorola has to be competitive in all of its products, from network equipment to cable set-top boxes to mobile phones. The company's trouble so far in harmonizing its various divisions is one reason why activist shareholders have called for a break-up. Brown has inherited this challenge from Zander, whose close adviser -- chief strategy officer Rich Nottenburg -- was recently tapped as interim chief technology officer to replace Motorola veteran Padmasree Warrior, who's now at Cisco.

"There's no doubt that [Brown] has done well by the company from an operational standpoint," said John Jackson, a wireless industry analyst at Yankee Group. "He came from a successful line, albeit one that wasn't as sexy as devices. ... But it's not clear that there's a strategic thread that can weave all these things together in a logical fashion."

Jackson said it could take four quarters for Brown to produce visible results -- "the sell-side equivalent of forever." Motorola's stock is down 21 percent from where it was in January. It closed Friday at $16.30 a share.

The steady worker

Brown's ascent at Motorola has been marked by quiet consistency, which his colleagues describe as suiting the divisions he ran -- businesses that reliably generated revenue for Motorola, but lacked the glamour, dynamism and fast-moving consumer trends that distinguish the mobile device sector. His first job at Motorola was running the unit that made communications equipment for governments and businesses -- some of the same clientele he had served while at Micromuse.

Brown sold Motorola's automotive equipment unit, offloading a business that was no longer profitable. And he negotiated the $3.9 billion acquisition of Symbol Technologies in 2006, stepping in as Motorola's point man on the deal after Zander made the first overtures in 2005.

"He was a hard negotiator, but a fair one," said Sal Ianuzzi, who was Symbol's CEO at the time of the deal and is now CEO at online recruiter Monster.com. Ianuzzi said, "We had a lot of very blunt, very candid one-on-one conversations" over the course of a year, during which Motorola fended off other companies that also came courting.

The addition of Symbol was an important one for both Motorola's revenues and product portfolio for business clients. Motorola already produced network equipment for large areas, but Symbol added a complementary line-up of products for connecting mobile devices to local wireless networks that cover smaller spaces.

"I think [Brown] is always thinking ahead -- he's always thinking what has to happen in the next three months, but also the next 24 months," Ianuzzi said. "It's a key thing that was responsible for the success of the merger."

Milk Duds a vice

Those who know Brown describe him as energetic but even-tempered and straightforward. He's less prone to the off-the-cuff remarks that made Zander a colorful and sometimes unpredictable presence at conferences. Ianuzzi said Brown's greatest vice is Milk Duds -- he sent him 10 pounds of the candy to congratulate him on the promotion to CEO.

"I just found him to be a likable, knowledgeable person -- just a regular guy," said David Stern, commissioner of the National Basketball Association, who's worked with Brown on corporate sponsorships. "When you talk business with him, you understand that he both talks the talk and walks the walk. But he comes across as being the most regular person who's not quite 'Aw, shucks,' but is easily accessible."

Stern, who carries a Motorola Krzr phone, said he talks both basketball and technology with Brown. Richard Brown, Greg's older brother, said Brown has loved basketball since he was young and "was always analyzing sporting teams, strategizing how he could win -- player personnel kind of thinking."

Richard Brown is also a technology industry veteran who most recently was CEO at Plano, Tex.-based Electronic Data Systems, the technology-services firm that Ross Perot founded in 1962.

The two brothers are 13 years apart, the bookends of a set of five children raised by a mathematics-teacher father and stay-at-home mother in South Brunswick, N.J. The age difference meant the two siblings saw little of each other growing up. When Greg graduated from Rutgers University with a bachelor's in economics, Richard said he advised his younger brother to "go to a business that isn't so heavy in bureaucracy and needs some leading-edge thinking. I encouraged him to go toward telecommunications."

When Greg Brown landed at Ameritech early in his career, his brother was already there, rising to become vice chairman. Richard said the two siblings worked in different areas and were careful to keep it that way, though they've watched each other's careers. Richard Brown is no stranger to leading an embattled technology company -- he was forced out of EDS in early 2003 after the company missed profit targets and saw its stock price plummet.

"A lot of what you do as CEO, you have to do alone," Richard Brown said. "The buck stops with the top person. You have to be ready to accept that and own that, and Greg is able to do that."

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