Moto's Mojo

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Jim Wicks: Motorola VP, design guru, father of the new Pebl.

Wicks at Motorola's new satellite studio in downtown Chicago.

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  The jury's still out on the new Pebl. Its fate hinges on the interplay among design (the Pebl), the balance sheet (paper), and finicky consumers (scissors), who can cut even the savviest strategy to ribbons.

Analysts, meanwhile, disagree on the Pebl's potential impact. Some say it's an icon; some call it a niche product compared to the Slvr, which targets candy-bar-phone customers, who make up more than half of the global market. And it couldn't have helped that Motorola spent two years developing the Pebl only to… miss the Christmas season. Due to parts shortages, the Pebl and Slvr didn't arrive in U.S. stores until January, missing out on countless sales, a failure that raises the question of whether the unsexy-but-essential details of engineering and manufacturing might have fallen through the cracks.

But the Pebl is here now, and Wicks is moving at full throttle to bring out the next generation. In January, the day after the Pebl arrived in stores, he's in his office, already thinking about the next derivatives and how to incorporate elements of the design into $40 handsets for emerging markets in India and China. The upcoming second-generation Rokr already has a rounder profile inspired by the Pebl; another phone incorporates its rubbery finish. More iterations are in the pipeline. As Wicks says, proudly: "We're already cutting steel."

Chuck Salter (csalter@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer based in Chicago.

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