Posted on 09/26/2005 1:17:24 PM PDT by Cicero
At a leadership seminar in California Friday, Motorola CEO Ed Zander talked about his role in rebuilding the phone maker's brand. But when answering a question from the audience about the iPod Nano, Zander apparently lost his cool saying, "Screw the Nano. What the hell does the Nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?"
Motorola, however, has fired back and claims IDG News Service, which first reported the outburst, is taking the comment completely out of context. Company officials say Zander was smiling and joking when he responded to the question, and he did praise Apple and its iPod.
"Motorola has a great partnership with Apple. Unfortunately Ed Zander's comments, made at a conference in California on Friday, were taken out of context," Motorola said in a statement.
The iTunes-capable ROKR has been met with a fairly cold reception since the start. Even on the day of its debut, Apple's Nano stole the show and Motorola was left on the sidelines as Steve Jobs wowed the crowds with a new iPod no thicker than a #2 pencil.
"During the Q&A session one questioner repeatedly and insistently asked what Zander thought of the Nano. Jokingly, Zander said he wasn't there to talk about the Nano - but to talk about the next big thing happening in the industry - the fusion of the phone and music. ROKR with iTunes was a good beginning, he said, and there's more to come," the statement continued.
Motorola says that the 1,000 song remark was simply a joke in response to part of the question that asked why the ROKR only held a maximum of 100 songs. It has been widely reported that Apple -- not Motorola -- imposed the restriction to keep the iTunes phone from affecting sales of the iPod.
Nonetheless, Motorola is working hard to clean up the public relations debacle, even though Zander himself has no problems with the new iPod. Sources tell BetaNews that Zander actually bought two Nanos following the product's launch.
For example, I have several full-length operas on my iPod but I don't like some random aria popping up when I shuffle my music. So I just create a Smart Playlist that blocks all classical music. I also have a Smart Playlist that plays nothing but songs with 4 or 5 stars in the Rock genre and a Smart Playlist that only plays pop music from the years 1974-1979.
The combinations are endless.
Now I'm loading all the album cover art into iTunes so when I upgrade to the 60GB photo, I'll be ready.
Classical music and opera are different beasts anyway. I could never get into hearing different parts of different musical works jumbled together in one shuffle.
I'll have to play with the smart playlists some more to see if I can accomplish what you have.
They are disposable items. The screen does mar easily, I know my wife has one. It will not stop the item from selling. She keeps all her gospel sound tracks, the vocal bible and a maybe a hundred hours of Bible studies on it.
If it gets scratched up I will get her another one, but I won't buy a whacked out competing product, which is the real reason for all the criticism.
If your company is successful and growing (even in tough times), you are in a small minority...congratulations.
"They are disposable items. The screen does mar easily, I know my wife has one. It will not stop the item from selling.
If it gets scratched up I will get her another one."
I recently saw an Ipod holder with a plastic screen protector that cost 4 bucks. That would seem to be the way to go instead of buying a new one.
As a "former" Motorola employee,I can safely say,it's not just him.I never met a division manager that knew his head from his ass either.While I was trying to persuade them to make a deal with Dell to install our pc modems,they knew better(Sarc).They decided not to and felt it was better to let customers go pick out their own modem at a local store and install it themselves.(Oh yeah,Dell came to us with the offer.The rest is history.)Ever see a Motorola modem anymore?
They were a great company once and can be again. They just have to get their thinking right.
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