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Say That Again

by Carlo Longino

Mon, Sep 26th 2005 10:31am





Motorola CEO Whines "Screw the Nano"

from the world's-tiniest-violin dept

Sound like somebody's upset that they got upstaged: "Screw the nano" is Motorola CEO Ed Zander's verdict on the latest iPod, announced at the same time as Motorola's rather disappointing iTunes phone. "What the hell does the nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs? People are going to want devices that do more than just play music, something that can be seen in many other countries with more advanced mobile phone networks and savvy users," he said in an interview. While he may be right that in many countries people are eating up mobile phones that can play music, they're only interested when the phones in question don't suck. Make a device that excels neither as a phone nor as a music player, and nobody's going to care. Perhaps some of Zander's vitriol should be aimed at his company's engineers for coming up with such an underwhelming product, rather than at Apple for creating something people actually like.

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  1.  
    identicon
    tom bartlett, Sep 26th, 2005 @ 12:00pm

    No Subject Given

    MOT was one of Apple's most important partners for a long time. With this kind of brain-damaged leadership, preceded by the even-more addled Galvin clan, is it any wonder Apple turned to Intel? IBM is not much better on the "Cluetrain" scale, BTW.

     

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  2.  
    identicon
    MindTrigger, Sep 26th, 2005 @ 1:28pm

    Ignorant

    "What the hell does the nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?"

    This is exactly the kind of ignorant statement I would expect some technophobic grandpa to say, not an executive at a "forward thinking" electronics company.

    My answers to his stupid questions are:

    1) The nano allows a very portable means of allowing me to listen to music where ever I want. Often times I DO NOT WANT my phone to be with me while I am in that place.

    2) *I* listen to 1000 songs. Actually, my current collection of MP3's in 10,000 song range.

    I plan to buy a nano because it's smaller, and because it will force me to more actively move music on and off the device. I found with my "big" ipod, that I have so much music on it already, that I get lazy about adding new stuff...

    Went to 3 stores this afternoon to buy a 4gb nano, and they were all sold out. Only one of the stores had a couple 2gb nanos left.

     

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  3.  
    identicon
    MindTrigger, Sep 26th, 2005 @ 1:33pm

    Re: Ignorant

    I should also add, that cell phones do not have to be a swiss army knife of features. I've had lots of high-end phones, and even being a techno lover like I am, I barely used any of the features. Cameras, streaming tv, games, apps, whatever. Most of it is marketing fluff pushed to me on a screen that is too damn small in the first place. Hell, I have Dell Axiom PDA, and I can barely stand THAT screen.

     

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  4.  
    identicon
    DazedTech, Sep 26th, 2005 @ 11:50pm

    It's all about business.

    I've been in the computer industry long enough to know that someone is always going to upstage you and sometimes you're going to come out with a flop or a defective product. (Apple Newton, Intel Processors with the FDIV problem, and Western Digital HD drives with the 6GB problem in the late 90s; just to name a few) - People make mistakes but if I were the CEO of Motorola, I'd at least listen to my customers instead of whining.

     

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  5.  
    identicon
    Pete Austin, Sep 27th, 2005 @ 10:05am

    Nobody uses a Swiss Army knife

    ... to eat dinner, given the choice. Thanks MindTrigger. Are you listening, Mr Zander?

     

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  6.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Sep 27th, 2005 @ 6:10pm

    No Subject Given

    And now we know why Motorola is sucking so hard.
    What is this American epidemic of crap leaders? Is this what comes of issuing MBAs?

     

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  7.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Sep 28th, 2005 @ 12:27am

    motorola said "screw nano" is just a joke

    http://www.betanews.com/article/Motorola_Screw_Nano_Comment_a_Joke/1127763247

     

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