Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside Leaving Moto to Become COO of Dropbox

[dgstorm]

After not quite two years as the head boss of Motorola, Dennis Woodside will be vacating his position as Chief Executive Officer to become the Chief Operation Officer of Dropbox. Despite being credited with impressive products like the Moto X and the Moto G, and despite spear-heading a great promotional campaign for Motorola, Woodside had a tough gig to make Motorola profitable. It turns out the task was too daunting, and Google decided to accept Lenovo's offer to take the profit sinking Motorola off of their hands. Regardless, Woodside leaves behind a solid (if short-lived) legacy at Motorola. The combination of excellent prices with great hardware and superior software found in the Moto X and G series serve as an example to the entire smartphone industry.

Woodside was formerly with Google for more than ten years and took over for Sanjay Jha after Google purchased Motorola. While working as the COO of Dropbox might be a step down in prestige for Woodside, it will still be a multi-million dollar a year job. Furthermore, Dropbox is currently the industry leader in offline storage services, and was recently valued at $10 Billion dollars. This means he will get a chance to share his ideas about corporate culture with a new company. We wish him well, and the head of Google did too. Here's a quote from Larry Page,

Dennis and the team have reinvented Motorola, with wonderful products like Moto X and Moto G. I wish him all the best with his new big job at Dropbox.

What do you think of this move? Is it a good thing for the new Lenovo owned Motorola, or is it a sign of a rocky road to come?

Source: WSJ

 

[cereal killer]

I have mixed feelings about this whole deal. On the one hand Moto is in good hands with Lenovo, but on the other hand I just don't think it's enough. Samsung owns the Android space. They are squezzing everyone out slowly but surely and I just don't know how long OEM's can continue to bleed out until they are literally forced to explore other options. What I THINK is going to happen is that companies like Lenorola, HTC, LG etc will begin to explore the Windows Phone space. Not abandon Android, but expand their focus. It's not that hard to slap WP onto their existing hardware and if MSFT makes it attractive enough (eliminating or lowering licensing fee's) they just may bite.

Something has got to give. OEM's cannot continue to keep getting pummeled in the Android space. They'll eventually be forced to pick up their toys and look for another playground if things don't change (and it doesn't look like things will be changing anytime soon)

That is my humble opinion

 

[jspradling7]

He better not mess with my 50 gb's of free data space! lol

That man has a very enviable resume'.

 

[xeene]

Guess he didn't want to learn Mandarin.

 

[pc747]

I have mixed feelings about this whole deal. On the one hand Moto is in good hands with Lenovo, but on the other hand I just don't think it's enough. Samsung owns the Android space. They are squezzing everyone out slowly but surely and I just don't know how long OEM's can continue to bleed out until they are literally forced to explore other options. What I THINK is going to happen is that companies like Lenorola, HTC, LG etc will begin to explore the Windows Phone space. Not abandon Android, but expand their focus. It's not that hard to slap WP onto their existing hardware and if MSFT makes it attractive enough (eliminating or lowering licensing fee's) they just may bite.

Something has got to give. OEM's cannot continue to keep getting pummeled in the Android space. They'll eventually be forced to pick up their toys and look for another playground if things don't change (and it doesn't look like things will be changing anytime soon)

That is my humble opinion

Samsung went to the biggest guy in the yard (Apple at the time) and punched him in the face. Now early on they got a mud hole stomped in them but they did not back down. They learned from apple of what works (taking other's ideas and putting their spin on it) and kept fighting.

This is my honest feel of oems who pack up and leave "bye". And I do not mean that in a literal way but if you do not have the mindset of "what do I need to do to kick this other guy's butt" then you are always going to put out mediocre products. Samsung is the big dog right now but that does not mean they are going to stay that way, in fact if Motorola under Lenovo continue on the path that Woodside has done then they could be the one to punch Samsung in the face.

This Motorola deal can go one of 2 ways with Lenovo.

1: Become a global presence and bring the motorola brand to the global market by making one high end device (ie galaxy s and note brand) using moto maker and further developing the moto g to take advantage of the mid end market. They are probably going to have another motorola device for the low end smart phone market. But the idea is that spreading the portfolio and diversifying allows them to get a better feel for the market as a whole.

2: Turn the motorola brand into crap.

I see Lg and Motorola (depending on how Lenovo handles them) as being in a position to compete and eventually unseating Samsung as the "android champ". That does not mean Samsung is going to stay down or make it easy to unseat them but either way the fight will push innovation and the market will win overall.

HTC on the other hand, they need to make more WPs as they are taking a beating in the market. HTC has it in them to make good devices but I think they are all over the place. In fact where HTC could make their money is in developing hybrid devices ie phone and tablets that can run both Android and Windows. Will that be easy, no, but that could be the edge that HTC needs to put them in place to lead the market.

 

[Dalvik_Cache]

I would leave if I just got bought by Lenovo as well lol

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