Motorola was founded in September 1928 in Schaumburg, Illinois. Their business model was based on designing wireless network-based equipment signal amplifiers, base stations, and cellular transmission.
Their network products included computer telephony, set-top boxes, high-definition television, digital video recorders, and network equipment for video broadcasts. From 2007 to 2009, the company suffered a huge loss of around $4.3 billion, leading to Motorola’s division into Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility in January 2011.
Motorola is considered to be the pioneer in bringing cellular phones; due to their hold on wireless technology; they were the first to bring mobile handsets and flip-modeled handsets. Till the mid-2000s, the company picked up high into the share market with a generous pace but faced loss in the next half of the decade.
With Google’s open-source mobile operating system, Android, Motorola became the first to introduce Android OS into their phones, starting with Android 2.0, which was released in the first week of November 2009. The handset division Motorola Mobility was first acquired by Google in 2012; later, Google CEO Larry Page sold it to Lenovo in 2014 for $2.91 billion.
Motorola – History
Joseph E. Galvin and Paul V. founded Motorola in 1928 in Illinois. They named the company Galvin Manufacturing Corporation and started by buying Stewart Battery company’s equipment and rented a small section of the building. Motorola started its business by manufacturing battery eliminators which were used in battery-powered radios operating over household electricity.
Paul Galvin named Galvin Manufacturing Corporation as Motorola on combining Motor and ola. Motorola started selling its product to municipalities and police departments in November 1930. Some of the first customers of Motorola, the City of Evanston police, the Village of Bellwood Police, and Illinois State Highway Police, used this one-way communication device to communicate during patrolling and for emergency communication.
Motorola worked with Dan Noble, known for semiconductor Technologies and FM radio. Motorola’s AM SCR-536 device played an important role in Allied communication.
Motorola Brand Value
From 2007 to 2009, the company suffered a huge loss of around $4.3 billion which led to the division of Motorola into Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility in January 2011. The board of directors made a final approval on splitting on March 26th, 2008; it was decided based on the business unit.
Motorola Solutions succeeded Motorola Inc.; they retained stocks from Motorola Inc. Motorola Mobility was acquired by Google, and both Google and Motorola signed a Non-disclosure agreement which gave rights to Google to do due diligence on Motorola’s patent portfolio.
Later, Lenovo showed interest in Motorola Mobility; according to the deal, Google owned the majority of Motorola’s patent portfolio and gave a license to Lenovo so that they could access the patent portfolio. The initial half of the 2000’s decade was working well for Motorola but in the next half.
Motorola faced a loss of $1.2 billion because of repetitiveness in their product while their competitors were inventing and providing newer features. This led to job cut-offs and restricted research. Motorola is known for developing a six sigma quality system adopted by many other companies and is still being used as a mark of quality.
Here, on the other hand, Motorola Solutions also sold its Orthogon and Canopy business in 2011; this led to the creation of Cambium Networks, which evolved these companies into Point to Point and Point to Multipoint product lines, respectively.
Motorola continued to sponsor teamLivington F.C. and Motherwell F.C, a Scottish Premier League club, but as Motorola reduced its manufacturing in Scotland, this deal ended after 11 years. Motorola also sponsored Rising Pune Giants in the Indian Premier League.
Motorola Brand Strategy
Motorola Inc. is one of those companies whose strength lies in research work, and they grew because of the numerous technologies they invented and brought into the world market. Some of them were ‘pager’ which was the result of their research in radio technologies, and ‘Motrac’ which was built to reduce power consumption in automobiles. Some of the strategies which worked for Motorola were:
Innovation and quality product
Motorola had good brand value for its products, and they kept innovation and research over technologies which let them bring mobile phones. Still, they suffered from losses after facing competition and their repetitive mobile models. Motorola was open to challenges and worked accordingly towards them.
They lacked business practices and quality of operation. Customer services were not satisfactory after sales. Secondly, they suffered from largely defective manufacturing. Due to an outdated management style, they lacked the quality of service.
Operation in various industries
Motorola’s two-way radio systems and wireless mobiles were used in many industries like commercial companies, regular consumers, and government organizations. Motorola was also engaged in technology related to providing online video services with high quality and speed; they also manufactured semiconductors that helped in wireless communication.
Motorola produces systems for the automotive, aerospace, computing, energy system, and telecommunication market. Motorola valued a high market share because of less competition and inventing technology. With a growing number of competitors, the percentage of a market share fell them.
Marketing Analysis
This is important for any company to observe the market. The cell phone market requires daily improvisation since customers are provided with a large number of options based on memory, size, prices, and technology, and daily new competition enters such a market. Customer-oriented was the need for Motorola; they could not satisfy the after-sale need of consumers which led to decreasing share in the market.
Later, the products launched were repetitive and provided no technological advancement. To meet the requirements of varying interests, Motorola introduced the Rokr series featuring more over music technology citing ease to use and improved audio quality; they added new software supporting music players with a better interface and provided a wireless Bluetooth headset.
They jointly worked with Napster, which helped upload and download music using the computer. The introduction of the new tagline “Hello Moto” went out as a great success for the company.
Customer analysis
With the daily increase in competition, it becomes important to analyze customers’ requirements and satisfy their needs. Motorola’s inability to hold up its share percentage in the market led to its downfall for the company.
A large number of the target customers came from various sections starting from teenagers and the working class, each of them having different needs. Bringing different models as per the varied section of society is needed so that one can specifically choose a few good models according to their requirements. Motorola’s Razr and Pebl somewhat helped in providing variety to the consumers.
Conclusion
Initially, the company started by selling battery eliminators, but they kept researching and investing in bringing out newer and improved technology.
To meet their need for investment and research, the company was not able to uphold the sale; they lacked focus in researching the market and could not provide cheaper products, whereas, with the increasing daily demand, new competitions came in and provided a variety of models at a cheaper rate and improved after-sale services.
Motorola lagged in providing quality service but had proved itself as one of the world’s major companies compared to innovation. Their patent works were bought by companies like Google and Lenovo proving their capability to throw an impact on the market.
Nonetheless, Motorola developed many technologies because of which our day-to-day life has changed; they were pioneers of wireless mobile phone technology and also have worked well in the field of semiconductors.
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