Sanjay Ja, New Deal leader at MOTOROLA

On August 4, 2008, Sanjay Jha, former chief operating officer of Qualcomm and president of CDMA technology, became co-chief operating officer and head of MOTOROLA's mobile terminal business. MOTOROLA's shares rose 11.46% to $9.82 on the New York Stock Exchange on Aug. 5 after the announcement, making it the 11th biggest gainer on the NYSE.

"People are looking to him to turn things around." Industry insiders say of the Indian. MOTOROLA had been without a head of handsets for several months. MOTOROLA had high hopes that the doctor, who was hired for $94m and other terms, would be the start of an overhaul that would prepare for the spin-off of the handset business, which was losing $1.9bn when Mr Sanjay took it over, and a separate public offering of the unit. Sanjay Jha, a 53-year-old IndiAn-American, is trying to lead a comeback at former mobile phone giant MOTOROLA.

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Sanjay Jha's name has boosted MOTOROLA's stock price because of his history as chief operating officer of Qualcomm, which he started in late 2006. He is well known for his record at Qualcomm, where he led the rapid growth of Qualcomm's mobile chip division to displace Texas Instruments as the leader in mobile chips for many years. According to iSuppli, Qualcomm had a 19.1% market share in mobile phone chips in 2007, ahead of Texas Instruments, which had 16.7%.

Mr. Sanjay, who worked at Qualcomm for 14 years, has a strong reputation, and people who have been in contact with him have said it is rare to work with such a charismatic leader. During this period, sanjay believed that qualcomm should be more open and extensively cooperate with the ICT(InformationCommunication Technology) industry chain, so as to seek greater development. Such views are at odds with Qualcomm's traditional business model. "Sanjay has always wanted to lead a public company," says his friend. "So maybe MOTOROLA, which is in desperate need of innovation, is the right choice."

Some Wall Street executives and analysts had predicted that MOTOROLA's handset business would eventually go the way of Siemens Mobility, the German giant that collapsed in 2006. The company's management got caught up in the runaway success of the classic Razr. Feature phones made by industrial design created an unprecedented market and allowed MOTOROLA to do nothing to generate sales and profits for two years. Then came the shock of being upended first by Nokia, then overtaken by Samsung and LG. After Apple introduced the iPhone 1 in 2007, MOTOROLA was hit hard: revenue fell by $2.35 billion between the fourth quarter of 2007 and the fourth quarter of 2008. MOTOROLA lost $4.163 billion in 2008, and its handset business is losing $400 million to $500 million almost every month.

MOTOROLA's handset division has gone through a record seven presidents in four years to turn things around, but to no avail. Until Sanjay Jha finally decided to take over MOTOROLA's handset division. On August 4, 2008, when Sanjay Jha, a 14-year veteran of Qualcomm, joined MOTOROLA as co-CEO and head of its mobile business, MOTOROLA's share price rose 10%. Forbes magazine commented at the time that Sanjay Jha "could be the savior of MOTOROLA's handset division."

Born in India to a poor family without a telephone, Sanjay Jha is the archetypal "techno" executive. Having earned a PhD in electrical and electrical engineering from the University of Sussex and Clyde in Scotland, he is well versed in different standards of chip technology. He led Qualcomm's growth into the world's largest supplier of mobile chips. Qualcomm is the only player representing the mobile-chip industry in the Open Handset Alliance that Google has convened for its Android operating system, and Sanjay has single-handedly pushed for a partnership between Qualcomm and Google. The complacent Sanjay Jha, who has always dreamed of leading a public company, turned to MOTOROLA for that reason.

When he took over the helm, he faced the situation that mobile phones were no longer a simple mobile terminal product, but gradually evolved into a mobile communication platform, such as 3G iPhone, blackberry and Google Android phones, all began to attract consumers with mobile Internet terminals as selling points. In contrast, MOTOROLA's software applications and mobile network applications have not improved significantly, which has made MOTOROLA's 3G handset performance far behind its competitors.

Stage a comeback

Sanjay Jha, who was appointed at the time of crisis, has made sweeping changes to MOTOROLA's mobile phone business since he joined the company. He redirected MOTOROLA's product offerings away from its previous focus on feature phones. Thanks to his time at Qualcomm working seamlessly with Google's Android team, led by Andy Rubin: As they worked together on the world's first Android phone, the HTC Dream, engineer Sanjay Jha got a sense of just how far the then-crude operating system could take people's experience of using the Internet and apps on their phones.

Soon, jha set up a small team inside MOTOROLA focused on Google's Android operating system, the most open and professional in the world, to develop a new blockbuster product with Android as the core, based on models originally planned to run Microsoft's WindowsMobile operating system. During that time, he defied persistent operating net losses of $291 million, a 45% drop in sales, an operating loss of $509 million, and a stock price that consistently oscillated around $4, even falling to an all-time low of $3.06. At a time when so many felt their visions dashed, Sanjay felt he had crossed the "dark hour" dividing life and death. MOTO's share price topped $5 at the end of April 2009, and the curve continued to climb until it peaked at $9 on November 9, 2009 -- three days after MOTOROLA's first truly "Renaissance" Milestone was released in the US.

At present, the industry generally believes that Sanjay Jia may have chosen a correct path, accurately grasp the development direction of the mobile phone market. Roger Entt, an analyst who covers telecom research at Nielsen, predicted in a recent report that U.S. smartphone sales will grow steadily over the next 18 months. By the fall of 2011, smartphones will account for half of all mobile phone sales, reaching nearly 30%.

Despite some media concerns about Sanjay's engineering background and lack of direct experience with the consumer market, he was surprisingly decisive when he arrived at MOTOROLA and immediately began to overhaul the R&D center: MOTOROLA's development of two operating systems, Linux Java and Symbian, will gradually be abandoned and Google's Android system will be used for mid-range and high-end phones. Sanjay saw MOTOROLA, which had long been a player in the 2G market, begin to shift to a mobile-Internet-based market by streamlining its product line and cutting staff, while growing closer to Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. With the Droid line of smartphones, tablets and a new Internet mobile terminal, former mobile giant MOTOROLA is trying to make a comeback under the leadership of Sanjay Jha. "With a strategic focus on smartphones and a partnership with Google, MOTOROLA may have a fighting chance." That's what Fortune said after MOTOROLA unveiled the latest version of its flagship smartphone, the Droid X.

The road to recovery

From the moment we embraced Google Security. MOTOROLA is involved in a long game of defiance at risk.