Icahn loses bid for Motorola board seat

After Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT)'s annual shareholder meeting last night, the company's bid to thwart billionaire Carl Icahn from attaining a seat on the company's board of directors must have worked. Icahn was pressuring to become installed on the board of the telecom and cellphone maker in his attempt to re-shape management and start a turnaround of the company. Clearly, Icahn was not pleased with the leadership of company CEO Ed Zander and would have heavily lobbied to get rid of him if he had won a board seat.

But, that did not happen. Icahn was not elected to the Motorola board and MOT shares tanked a bit his morning when trading started, as a result. As Icahn's bid to have Motorola take on more debt and return more to shareholders fell by the wayside, it also gave Zander more time and room to operate and get Motorola back on the road to hot products, rapid development and marketing and profitability -- something lacking from the company last quarter as the first quarterly loss since 2004 was put on the books.

This action buys Zander some precious time, but the road won't be easy. Competitors like Samsung and Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) are eating away at Motorola's marketshare every day and the success of the Motorola RAZR is now fading sharply from view. It may take another market-disrupting product like the RAZR to get Motorola back on target again -- but is that even possible with the current technological state of the modern wireless phone? Doubtful -- there are few (if any) paradigm shifts left unless we all want to start implanting phones into our bodies or something. Perhaps Motorola should purchase a medical device company?