For the better part of this year, technology industry executives and investors had been expecting that Brooklyn native Ed Zander, chairman and chief executive of giant Motorola Inc., would step down as the company continued to lose market share to competitors and its stock price plummeted.
On Friday, their expectations became reality as Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola announced the 60-year-old Zander will resign as the company’s chief executive effective Jan. 1. Zander will remain Motorola’s chairman until the company’s annual meeting in May.
He will be replaced as chief executive by Greg Brown, now Motorola’s president and chief operating officer.
Why should any of this be of interest to Long Islanders? Simply because last year, Motorola acquired one of Island’s larger companies, Symbol Technologies Inc. of Holtsville, a maker of equipment that scans bar-codes on packages and boxes.
A year before Symbol was acquired, it employed about 1,200 on the Island. Motorola has declined to provide more current employment numbers, but employment is believed to be about 1,000.
The person at the head of Motorola will have the biggest say over what happens at Symbol in the years ahead.
According to a Motorola announcement, Brown, before becoming president and chief operating officer, headed four different businesses at the company.
“He also led the $3.9-billion acquisition of Symbol Technologies, the second-largest transaction in Motorola’s history and an important strategic move to strengthen Motorola’s enterprise offering,” Motorola said.
Does this make him a booster of Symbol in the long-term? Symbol employees and Long Islanders will wait and see.
-- JAMES BERNSTEIN