Zander recalls 'tearful' first days at Motorola | InfoWorld | News | 2005-09-23 | By Tom Krazit, IDG News Service

"Screw the nano. What the hell does the nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?" Zander said. People are going to want devices that do more than just play music, something that can be seen in many other countries with more advanced mobile phone networks and savvy users, he said.

I don't pretend to know any more about the Apple/Motorola ROKR project than any other outsider, but this comment from Zander seems odd.

Personally, I'm not surprised to hear the CEO of a handset manufacturer make this kind of comment. It's the kind of dismissive comment all of his colleagues make, given the size of their market; I've never heard a Nokia or Motorola executive who didn't think we'd all eventually do everything from computing to watching TV on our mobile phones. And, given how painful Motorola's software design feels to me, I rather expected this sort of contempt for the individual user emanated from the top of the organization.

At any rate, in a Zander-Jobs deathmatch, I got my money on the boy from Cupertino.