'The majority of the challenges Motorola faces are our own doing'

Where did it all go wrong for Motorola? Well, they flubbered the transition to high-end smartphones and 3G, missed the shift from hardware to software and apps, and overcomplicated its production strategy.

Not a surprise? No, but check who's saying it: Motorola president and co-CEO Greg Brown, in a refreshingly upfront interview with the Financial Times.

"I think the majority of the challenges Motorola faces are our own doing,” he says. "The economy exacerbates it but certainly didn’t cause it."

Oh, and the company "didn’t see the trends coming in smartphone and 3G with the kind of foresight and customer attention that it should have".

The FT highlights the fact that Motorola had a 23.3 per cent global market share of handset sales in the fourth quarter of 2006, but that this had fallen to 6.5 per cent by the end of last year, with the company's handsets division reporting an operating loss of $2.2 billion for 2008 as a whole.

Brown also outlines the previously-announced new strategy of focusing on mid-to-high end handsets, many of which will use Google's Android OS.

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