Executive who helped design the Motorola DROID, Moto G and Moto 360 is leaving the company

Motorola Mobility is losing an executive who had a hand in designing many of the company's most popular phones, and its first smartwatch. Jim Wicks, who has led the design team at Motorola for a dozen years, is leaving Motorola Mobility next month for Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering. At Motorola, Wicks got to work on the design of some of Motorola's most popular cellphones including the Motorola RAZR and the Motorola DROID. The latter was the handset that kicked off 'Androidmania' when it was launched in November of 2009. He also was involved in designing the Motorola Moto G and the Motorola Moto 360 smartwatch.

Replacing Hicks will be Ruben Castano, who originally joined Motorola in 2005 as a design manager working out of Chicago. Three years later he was promoted to Design Director which resulted in a move to Beijing. Four years later he was back in Chicago as Senior Design Director before transferring to Sao Paulo in 2014.


Hicks' departure follows the exit of Motorola president Rick Osterloh, who left the company at the end of March. Osterloh has since been tabbed by Google to run the company's hardware division. His departure left no obstacles in the way for corporate parent Lenovo to fully control Moto's smartphone business. The China based manufacturer, which was practically unknown in the west when it purchased IBM's personal computer business in 2005, paid Google $2.91 billion for Motorola early in 2014.


source: Crain's via SlashGear