Motoral Inc, one of the very first tech company was an American multinational telecommunications company founded on September 25, 1928, with its headquarters in Schaumburg, Illinois. If we go rewind about a decade or so, Motorola was a big name in the telecommunications field. Motorola’s filed of business ranged from wireless network equipment such as cellular transmission base stations and signal amplifiers. However having suffered huge losses amounting to around $ 4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company demerged into two independent public companies namely Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011.
Motorola Mobility soon after the demerger in 2012 was acquired by Google and after two years acquired by Chinese company Lenovo in 2014. Motorola Solutions is functioning as the direct legal successor of the parent company.
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FOUNDING AND EARLY HISTORY THE MOTOROLA
Two brothers Paul V. Galvin and Joseph E. Galvin in 1928 set up a company named as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in a small rented shop with only $ 565 as in working capital and five employees.
Galvin Manufacturing Corporation started its business by manufacturing battery eliminators which enabled battery-powered radios to operate on household electricity. In 1930s Galvin Manufacturing Corporation stepped into manufacturing of radios that can be fitted into the cars and from here the name of the radio was kept “Motorola” taking an idea from “motor” (for motorcar) with “ola” (from Victrola). This radio became a blockbuster for Galvin brothers and the begged orders from various car companies to fit the radio in the cars. The success of the radio Motorola inspired te Galvin brothers to name the company Motorola Inc in 1930.
BUSINESS OF MOTOROLA BETWEEN 1950 – 1980
Motorola became a publicly-traded company in the year 1939 and in post world war yeas it entered into the TV manufacturing business. In 1947 Motorola entered into TV manufacturing venture with the model VT-71 with 7-inch cathode ray tube. In 1960, Motorola introduced the world’s first large-screen portable, transistorized and cordless television with a 19 inches screen.
In 1955 Motorola designed and developed the world’s first commercial high power germanium based transistor. Between 1955- 1980 most of the NASA’s flight carried with them transistors designed by Motorola. In 1969 Neil Armstrong spoke the famous words “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” from the Moon on a Motorola transceiver. Motorola introduced the world’s first rectangular colour picture tube in 1963. IN 1971 Motorola introduces a prototype of the first handheld portable telephone.
MOTOROLA 1980 – 2014
After the huge success of its ventures in pre-1980s Motorola in 1980 introduced MC68000 a next-generation 32-bit microprocessor which for many years was a backbone for the computer devices designed by many companies including Apple, Commodore, Atari, Sun, and Hewlett Packard.
The world’s first commercial cellular device DynaTAC 8000X telephone was introduced by Motorola in 1983 and in the same year it got approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for this device. In the year 1994 Motorola introduced the world’s first digital radio system with the pager inbuilt and telecommunication devices in it. In 1997 Motorola designed two-way pagers.
The first decade of 21 st century was a the time of boom for Motorola. World’s first wireless cable modem gateway which combined a high-speed cable modem router with an ethernet switch and wireless home gateway was introduced by Motorola in 2002. In 2005 came the biggest success for Motorola with lanching of its Motorola RAZR mobile phone.
This phone proved to be table turner for the company with more than 130 million mobiles of this model sold in the market. In 2006 Motorola launched iRadio as its first music subscription service for live streaming of music. In the following years, Motorola acquired many companies including software platform AJAR developed by the British company TTP Communications.
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DOWNFALL OF THE COMPANY
By the end of the first decade of 21 st century, the market for Motorola had many competitors like Apple, LG, Nokia. The success company saw by the launch of Motorola RAZR was not seen in most of the phones launched after 2010. In 2006 Motorola’s share on the mobile phone market was around 23% but by the end of 2007, it dropped to 12%, falling to third place behind Samsung. It was further slid sown again, to 6%, by 2009. The downfall of the share of Motorola was fulfilled by companies like LG, Sony Ericsson and Apple. Due to the continuous losses of around $ 4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company demerged into two independent public companies namely Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011.
Motorola Mobility soon after the demerger in 2012 was acquired by Google and after two years acquired by Chinese company Lenovo in 2014. Motorola Solutions is functioning as the direct legal successor of the parent company.
PRESENT BUSINESS OF MOTOROLA SOLUTIONS
Today Motorola has lost a major chunk in the market but still, it is in the business of tablet computers, mobile phones, smartphones, two-way radios networking systems, cable television systems, wireless broadband networks, RFID systems, integrated circuits, mobile telephone infrastructure, televisions. Motorola has lost its market held in the business which it had pre-2000 but still, it is not out of business.
At present Brayn Lopez is the serving CEO & Chairman of the company ( Motorola Solutions) with Gino Bonanotte as the CFO, Shamik Mukherjee as the CMO and Mahesh Saptharishi as the CTO.
