What Happened to Motorola

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
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Nov 27, 2006
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Chicago Magazine takes a long and in-depth look at the trials and tribulations of Motorola. Fire up your tablet or get comfortable in your Aeron chair and settle in for a good Sunday read.

Getting outflanked by tech upstarts, hacked in two by a fearsome corporate raider, and finally taken over in part by a Chinese company that exists largely because of the world Motorola made for it: Such a fate would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. Motorola was then one of America’s greatest companies, having racked up a stunning record of innovation that continually spawned new businesses, which in turn created enormous wealth. Motorola had the vision to invest in China long before most multinational companies. It even developed Six Sigma, a rigorous process for improving quality that would be embraced by management gurus and change the way companies nearly everywhere operate.
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It even developed Six Sigma, a rigorous process for improving quality that would be embraced by management gurus and change the way companies nearly everywhere operate
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Eh, I worked for a large corporation that brought on a six sigma graduate. He outsourced everybody and customer service suffered. So maybe that was part of the program.
 
How sad.

I remember the Motorola logo from each and every gadget that I ever wanted from my childhood. It was always this mysterious symbol ( to me as a kid anyways) that marked this is a really neat grown-up tool (toy).

Early computers, CB's, even now search for walkie-talkie and all the good one are Motorola.

/Sigh.... The world around me is going dim and dark faster then age can affect my eyes.

While I prefer to keep my eye-sight though my life it is still sad to see so many of the old brands and childhood treasures go dark in this thing we call the future.

Thanks Terry for bumming me out :)
 
"Zander says he believed that by working with Apple, Motorola could become cool again. But much as it had taught the Chinese to compete with it years before, Motorola was teaching one of the most creative, competitive, and consumer-savvy companies of all time how to make a phone."

Actually, Motorola was teaching Apple how NOT to make a phone. After Motorola's "design by committee" created the bomb that was the Motorola Rokr and reminded Apple why they had abandoned Motorola for Intel for its desktop CPUs, Apple went its own way and made the iPhone's hardware in-house.
 
Motorola lost its vision and was chopped to bit when they couldn't keep up. As much as I miss them, they did it to themselves.
 
Spidey329 said:
Eh, I worked for a large corporation that brought on a six sigma graduate. He outsourced everybody and customer service suffered. So maybe that was part of the program.
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This is a fucking joke of a program. Nothing good ever comes from this shit.
 
viscountalpha said:
Motorola lost its vision and was chopped to bit when they couldn't keep up. As much as I miss them, they did it to themselves.
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This I agree as the last really cool Motorola product that I wanted was the Razr phone, and ironically that was the last non smart phone cell phone I have ever owned.
 
"Chinese officials eventually agreed to let Motorola set up manufacturing in the country, on one condition: that Motorola teach its Chinese employees and suppliers how to make products good enough for global customers. Bob knew that China would, little by little, copy the company’s technology and compete with Motorola. But the Chinese market would be so large, he figured, that even a small slice would be worth the investment."

The problem here is, they didn't keep enough of it as a blackbox. China copied everything and in turn gutted motorola and when the husk was dead- dropped them. Grotesque? yep. Fact of life? you betcha.
 
viscountalpha said:
"Chinese officials eventually agreed to let Motorola set up manufacturing in the country, on one condition: that Motorola teach its Chinese employees and suppliers how to make products good enough for global customers. Bob knew that China would, little by little, copy the company’s technology and compete with Motorola. But the Chinese market would be so large, he figured, that even a small slice would be worth the investment."

The problem here is, they didn't keep enough of it as a blackbox. China copied everything and in turn gutted motorola and when the husk was dead- dropped them. Grotesque? yep. Fact of life? you betcha.
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I think the Moto G is the best handset they have ever made. It represents a phenomenal value. I had Motorola brick phones, the Star-Tac, the RAZR. I love my moto G, hopefully they can continue making products like this.
 
JeffDC said:
It's what happens when capitalism is forced to compete with Communist totalitar... oh forget it.
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viscountalpha said:
"Chinese officials eventually agreed to let Motorola set up manufacturing in the country, on one condition: that Motorola teach its Chinese employees and suppliers how to make products good enough for global customers. Bob knew that China would, little by little, copy the company’s technology and compete with Motorola. But the Chinese market would be so large, he figured, that even a small slice would be worth the investment."

The problem here is, they didn't keep enough of it as a blackbox. China copied everything and in turn gutted motorola and when the husk was dead- dropped them. Grotesque? yep. Fact of life? you betcha.
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This is what happens now that wallstreet has unopposed governance of the country's economy. They couldn't give a crap about long term consequences for the country or even the companies they control and jump for a short term return. Going to China plays well for the stock, doesn't matter if a company is slitting its own throat in the process. They couldn't give a fuck. Doesn't matter if we eventually lose any capability for electronics and return to being a banana republic.
 
I worked for Motorola for 6 years.
I was working on an R&D product and soon as it was done, the whole thing was sold to some Korean factory. :confused:
I am not sure what is left at the plant since I have not gone by there.(Tempe, AZ plant on Priest)
 
Motorola at least made it back into the top 10 last quarter, while Nokia fell out.
 
Motorola, Nokia, BlackBerry all have gone or are going down the tubes. Motorola had a great start with Android, but they failed to keep up with the yearly hardware refresh, that's it.

Moto X was meh-middle of the road for hardware, so they had to adopt middle of the road prices. Gimmicky case colors didn't help that. My guess is they thought hardware was fast enough, and didn't need more. Very very poor foresight.

I hope their watch is good, but they are behind already, other manufactures have 2-3 watches, and round is just about out for them. Again product cycle is too long.
 
My cellphone is a Motorola C261, you can bounce it off the floor and it still works. I never figured out how to download photos from it though.


Motorola is the future of corporate America -- extinction.
 
Motorola is collapsing under the weight of M&A's and all around internal politics and bureaucracy. Innovation? Whats that you say? No, lets survive under our patents and file lawsuits.
 
I have owned several Motorola phones over the years, but only one Smartphone, the Droid Maxx. They got it all right with the Droid Maxx, and Moto X which were both are very similar internally. Perhaps one of the best phones released last year, the build quality was amazing and the 3 day battery life a huge benefit.

But nothing could overcome the stigma of Motorola Blur. I would mention how pleased I was with my Droid Maxx and my friends would all mutter how bad Blur sucked. It doesn't have Blur I would say, but they were all now part of the Touchwiz/Galaxy sheep herd by then and couldn't wait until the next Galaxy phone came out.
 
I went through 4 Motorola flip phones in a year because they were cheaply made and fell apart.
My cousin and his wife went through Droids woth slide out keyboards like wildfire because the keyboatds would fall off.
My uncle bought a Bionic that was, as per the Verizon site, had a quad core Tegra cpu and when it nooted up had a dual core OMAP instead (which was obsolete over a year when it was stuffed into the Kindle a year before that).
In my experience Moto has been underpowered and just made like junk.
 
jpm100 said:
This is what happens now that wallstreet has unopposed governance of the country's economy. They couldn't give a crap about long term consequences for the country or even the companies they control and jump for a short term return. Going to China plays well for the stock, doesn't matter if a company is slitting its own throat in the process. They couldn't give a fuck. Doesn't matter if we eventually lose any capability for electronics and return to being a banana republic.
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I refer to this problem as "MBA-itis", when MBA's take a once successful company and innovator and plow it into the ground with ineffectual "defend and extend" strategies and often sacrifice quality, especially when they outsource production, in order to increase short term earnings.

But this isn't a uniquely American thing though, exactly the same thing is happening with Japanese tech companies. Yep, those once vaunted Japanese names like Sony have also become also-rans largely for the same reasons. At least in America these companies are often supplanted by newer American companies (Wintel displaced IBM, Google and Apple displaced Motorola). In Japan, thanks to culture and an excessive regulatory regime, the entrepreneurial environment has been strangled, so when their big companies fail it's almost always foreign companies like Apple who win.
 
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