From the Home Office in Schaumburg

My very third post on this lame-ass blog had to do with Motorola and some stupid press conference they had. And sure enough today there is more bad Motorola news. My favorite bit:

Motorola also failed to provide its usual quarterly market share data, leading analysts to surmise the company is losing out to larger rival Nokia and smaller Chinese competitors.

"It's convenient that they've stopped giving guidance about total industry sales and their own market share during a quarter that looks like to us that they lost quite a bit of market share in their handset business," said Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Paul Sagawa, who has an "underperform" rating on the stock and does not own any shares.

I find this hilarious, because in recent quarters Motorola has seized on the most minute positive jiggles in their market share as proof that their "straight talk" or "tough approach" or "aggressive cost cutting" or "management buzzword" was about to blast the company out of its rut. So maybe those numbers don't matter so much now? Here are my top ten reasons the Motorola market share figures are missing, as provided by the tiny Motorola spokesman in my mind:

10. Our high-tech robotic dog ate them.
    
9. We wanted Jack Welch's advice, but he won't return our calls.
   
8. I was supposed to read them to you from my phone, but this damn screen is too tiny!
   
7. We farmed the reporting out to the plant in China, and the whole thing's in Mandarin!
   
6. We wanted Bob Galvin's advice, but he won't return our calls.
   
5. We appear to have laid off all the marketing people who could add and subtract.
   
4. Noisy mobs of angry shareholders make it impossible to work around here.
   
3. We only want to focus on our Malcolm Baldrige awards right now.
   
2. Still getting the hang of this color printer.
   

...and the Number One Reason for the missing Motorola market share figures:

1. Hey, have you seen this new, cool, black StarTac?