Iqbal Arshad at Motorola Mobility's headquarters at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, IL
Born
Iqbal Arshad
Nationality
American
Alma mater
University of Miami Northwestern University
Occupation(s)
SVP of Engineering and Global Product Development at Motorola
Iqbal Arshad is an American engineer, inventor,[1] speaker and technology executive. He has served as the senior vice president of engineering and global product development at
Motorola Mobility,
Google and
Lenovo,[2] and has been responsible for design and development of industry-leading smartphones, tablets smartwatches, wearables, silicon, and mobile computing technologies.
Arshad re-joined Motorola in 2003 to lead product development and management. He led design & development of the first
CDMA variants of the
RAZR and
RAZR 2 product lines, the first
DROID smartphone, the first Android Tablet (
Xoom) featuring the Honeycomb (Android 3.1) OS,[2][3][4] the first dual-core, dual-OS smartphone (
Atrix 4G[5]), and led
4G LTE silicon and software.[6]
In 2012 Motorola Mobility was acquired by Google. Iqbal was chosen as part of the senior leadership team under CEO
Dennis Woodside during the acquisition.[7] Under Google, he led the
Moto X,[8][9]Moto G, and
Moto 360 products. He also launched the
Nexus 6 in collaboration with Google.[10][11]
In 2014, Lenovo acquired Motorola from Google.[12] Arshad continued to lead Engineering & Product Development for both Motorola in the US and Lenovo MBG (Mobile Business Group) in China. Arshad's team engineered and shipped
Droid Turbo 2 (world's first shatterproof display),[13] the modular
Moto Z, a collection of Moto Mods,[14][15] and a Moto Mod developer kit for 3rd parties.[16][17]
Awards, speeches, and public service
In 2010, Arshad was recognized by Crain's Chicago in their annual 40 under 40 list.[18][19] He serves on the advisory board for Northwestern University's Master of Engineering Management, and is a member of the
IEEE. He previously served on the Illinois Innovation Council.[2]
Arshad has had several public speaking engagements, including a presentation[20] during Northwestern Engineering's ‘Design:Chicago 2014’ event,[21] and as the 2014 commencement speaker for Northwestern University's
McCormick School of Engineering.