Verizon Wireless (VZ) is holding a media event today to share more details on its Google Android-powered Droid handsets. Below is a live-blog of the event.

9:20 a.m. EST: Attendees are filing in to a small conference room at the W Hotel in New York. Not much on display, other than a poster reading “Droid Era Begins in 00:00 Seconds” that shows the device. Motorola (MOT) and Verizon branding are prominent, with four icons at the bottom of the screen. Someone in the room is talking about the “iDon’t Care” spoof of the “Droid Does” ad campaign.

9:32: Jim Gerace, a Verizon Wireless spokesman, kicks off the event, introducing Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha and Verizon Wireless CMO John Stratton.

9:33: “This is a pretty exciting day for us,” Stratton says. Motorola has been “a critical part of this story,” calling Motorola, Google (GOOG) and Verizon Wireless three great brands that have come together on Droid.

9:34: “We get to a pretty intriguing device” because of this partnership, Jha says. Running multiple applications at the same time, broadband capability, a robust Web browser that renders pages the way they look on desktop PCs, will all become increasingly important, he says. Also messaging: Voice, Exchange email, Gmail, other POP and IMAP interfaces, he adds

Read the rest of this post on the original site

In landing a new chief executive for its troubled mobile device business, Motorola Inc. is clearly banking on the old adage that “you get what you pay for.” Sanjay Jha, the co-chief executive of Motorola, managed to seal a compensation deal that The Wall Street Journal estimated could be worth $94 million, including restricted stock, options, base pay and a special payment. That’s more than nine times what he was earning at Qualcomm Inc., his previous employer, and would put him easily in the upper echelon of the country’s highest-paid CEOs, according to rankings by Forbes.

Read the rest of this post

What do CEOs say to each other in private? Mean Street intercepted an (imaginary) email sent this morning by Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain to Sanjay Jha, newly appointed co-CEO of Motorola.

Dear Sanjay,

Many congratulations on your new job–and welcome to our ranks. It is a rare privilege to be CEO of a desperate company.

I’ve been at it now for almost nine months at Merrill Lynch, and I’ve learned a thing or two that you might find useful.

I hate to start on a sour note, but Monday’s announcement could have been handled better. Your arrival at Motorola was trumpeted a bit too loudly.

“A stunning win for Motorola,” cheered the Wall Street analysts. And your recruitment alone added more than $2 billion to the market value of Motorola.

Read the rest of this post