TechDroider: History

Happy Birthday, MOTOROLA!


September 25, 1928 was the day Galvin Manufacturing Corporation was founded. A few years later, it changed its name to Motorola, after a very successful portable consumer radio called "Motorola" was released by the company. It was so popular that they had to change the company's name after that product. The name came up by mixing Motor, from automobiles, and Ola, from sound.



Since then, the Motorola brand has become the standard for quality and innovation in many consumer product categories. From Walkie-Talkies to pagers, from TVs to home networking devices, Motorola represents the best of the 20th and 21st centuries, and is still as relevant as ever.




After 2011, Motorola separated into two different companies: Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility. While Motorola Solutions creates business, industry, and public-safety products, Motorola Mobility focuses on consumer products like smartphones. At the same time, Motorola Mobility looks after its brand licensing business, in which you can find Motorola Home and Motorola Accessories. This business is always expanding to new categories. In fact, we just found out there are some smart Motorola-branded lamps on the way. How cool is that?!




The Motorola brand is loved by most of us and will go forward as trendsetter. Its name and the batwing logo represents a lot: memories, dreams and history. And I'm not saying this because I'm the biggest/craziest fan/collector, I say it because it's the truth of the matter. Motorola is the best...




Motorola revamps its history archives

(Credit: Binatone India)

Some time ago, the history website at motorola.com went away, and many fans were wondering what was going on. Well, now they're back with a design revamp and even more company facts.

The new "Motorola Milestones" page covers iconic releases from the past each month and now it's celebrating Motorola Brazil's 20th anniversary and also the 25th anniversary of the MicroTAC lite, the first dual-mode phone.




Want to learn more? You can head over to the Motorola Archives to learn  about the awesome history of the company right here: MOTOROLA HISTORY



The History of the RAZR: part II


We took some time after posting PART 1, but we are back again and today we want you to follow us through the challening years our beloved Motorola faced, and how it got stronger and learnt from its mistakes.



The History of the RAZR: part II

A new beginning? It seemed so. Motorola was aware of the growing popularity of smartphones, so they developed Windows Mobile and Linux phones for the mature Asian markets while Europe and the US would get RAZRs. The MotoMING, a 2006 phone, had an Intel processor, a touchscreen, and even allowed multi-tasking. The moto Q was a qwerty smartphone with Windows Mobile 6.0. But it was not enough. They needed to re-invent the Razr. 

And so they did. May 2007 saw the release of the RAZR2, one of the most advanced phones at the time. Although people didn’t care about the stuff they care today, like processor and OS, the RAZR2 had Linux and was the fastest phone around, with a 500MHz processor. It even had a voice recognition software in which you could dictate an SMS or even open some phone features by voice commands. It even had an external touchscreen in which you could access many of the phone’s features. The phone was shocking, brilliant, and bloody sexy. But the iPhone’s release and competition from others, made it sell less than expected. It did become a bestseller, but it was not enough.

Motorola started to market the phone as the it-phone of 2007. Beckham would have it, Fergie would have it, so everyone else should. During its first quarters, it sold almost the same the iPhone did, but sadly, the Motorola hate bandwagon that we often see around and the press loves to jump into it, was picked up and it became cool to say Moto was not cool anymore. And if you think about it, this has happened many times since then, and then they go and love it again. 2007 is no different from late 2007 or early 2016.



Anyway, what now? Linux brought tons of issues. To begin with, it did not support 3G, something everyone demanded. In addition, the development team at Motorola was slow at getting the 3G support on Linux ready and releasing those phones. One example is the Rokr E8. It was set to be released in the summer of 2007, at the same time the RAZR2 was going to be released, and also the PEBL2 (later called Moto U9). But the software team and a component supplier caused them to be released 6 months later and ruin the product cycle. The phone was fresh and exciting. Even if it was delayed for 6 months it won Phone of the Year at CES 2008, but they released it in June 2008, 12 months after its originally planned released.

Silence before the storm. There was nothing Motorola could do. Its supplier caused them nightmares, the RAZR was still a hit but was not seen as a cool phone anymore, and the RAZR2 couldn't even sell half of what the original was selling after four years of its release. From 2008 until Q4 2009 Moto was silent. Only a few interesting devices were released like Zine ZN5 and AURA, but they were outdated because the Linux delay and supplier issues. 2008 saw the release of less Razr’s, yet they were still selling like hot cakes. 



In fact, the Razr was the best selling mobile in the USA until November 2008, which is remarkable, given the fact that it was a 2004 phone. At least 45 million Razr’s were sold in 2007, and over 15 million in the following year. That's for the original one, while RAZR2 was either reaching end of life through the carriers or being terribly discounted. In fact, they kept releasing V3 variants until 2009 but the Razr2 series  didn't see any improved variant (except for a limited AT&T one which only brought to the US some features that were available in Europe). 

So Moto was quiet, silent, and worried about its future. The economic downturn didn't help, the other divisions under Motorola were being affected, costs were being cut (lay-offs) and investors gave Greg Brown some awful nightmares. He's even confessed through some interviews that there were days/weeks he could not sleep. But remember, Motorola never dies: it has more lives than a cat and has had more comebacks than Jesus. The storm was about to come and Moto was going to take its crown back.

How so? We'll find out in part III.





The history of the RAZR: Part I



Sometimes I feel the RAZR deserves much more credit than it got. People have a horrible misconception that it's just an old flip phone, when it actually was a revolutionary device that changed the way people interact with their smartphones, care for customization and good designs. So I will release three separate articles about the history of this amazing phone.



The History of the MOTOROLA RAZR, part I

Founded in 1928, Motorola invented the car radio, the walkie-talkie, and the mobile phone. It was always the innovator. The first HDTV standard was shown by Motorola. All the moon landing radio transmissions and images were shown live to over 600 hundred million people back in 1969, thanks to Motorola, who transmitted Neil Armstrong’s memorable words (“It is one small step for a man but one giant leap for mankind”). Motorola not only created the flip phone and vibrator mode (StarTAC, 1996), but also created the most popular mobile phone of all time: the RAZR.



The RAZR. The phone that started the idea of buying a new device every year and becoming a fan of a product line. If it wasn’t for it, there wouldn’t be an iPhone, or a Galaxy, or even any smartphone today. Released back in July 2004, it was the best of the best. It was impossibly thin, at 13.9mm. The standard was 20mm or so. Razr also featured unique materials like glass and aluminum. And the fun fact over here is that Motorola never thought it would be a success! They actually thought it would sell under a million devices. 




Boom! The Razr quickly became the phone everyone wanted. With over 100 million units sold within 28 months, the Razr became the fastest selling mobile of all time (until 2015). Motorola milked its success by releasing dozens of colour variations of it: Black, Silver, Pink, Purple, Blue, Gold, Red, Green, Lime, Miami Ink tatoos, just to name a few. Eveyone in the world would have a different version of the Razr, because of the different technologies countries offered. So apart from the V3, the V3i, V3c, V3m, V3r, V3s, V3im, V3x, V3xx, V3re, V3a, V3t, V3i D&G, MAXX V6, were born. From 2004 to 2007, Motorola kept releasing Razrs based in the V3 design. They were all the same phone, though, the RAZR. You can’t say Motorola released 26 versions of the Razr because there was only one Razr. Smartphone manufacturers release different RAM versions or 16/32/64GB variants, and that's what Motorola did for last decade's standards: colors and 2G/3G variants. And making a Razr for everyone worked very well.




The unpredictable and surprising success of this little flip phone made Motorola think they could release more exciting products in different form factors. And so they did. 2005 saw the release of the SLVR, the thinnest phone in the world at less than 11mm, and the PEBL, a fashion-centric mobile similar to a pebble. Although these phones sold very well, their sales were not even close to the ones of the Razr, which was the star of the show. 2005 also saw the release of the ROKR, the first true iPhone. It was not a success, though. 



Steve Jobs wanted to install the itunes player inside a Razr and call it an iPhone. Motorola wanted the Razr just for themselves. The lack of collaboration between the companies resulted in the Rokr E1. Steve Jobs even boycotted the product by releasing the iPod Nano the same day and showing how the Rokr wasn’t a good music player. But that’s another story. By 2006 the Razr was already a legend, and spin-offs kept coming, making Motorola's market share skyrocket. 




A stylish flip phone called KRZR, with advanced features and an improved OS, and also the RIZR, a slider version of the Razr with improved functionality. Las but not least, the moto Q, the first smartphone to sell over a million copies in the USA. Moto Q was the smartphone version of the RAZR. It came with Windows Mobile, it let you to install a wifi SD card, and it even allowed an extended battery.



But the star was still the original RAZR. 2006 ended really well for Moto, with over 65 million phones sold in the last quarter of the year, more Razrs sold than any other quarter, new colours for RIZR, KRZR and exciting new spin-offs about to come. What was  about to go wrong? The price of the Razr. The phone was already two years old by that time and Nokia, Samsung and LG were releasing improved copies of the Razr. 

Motorola's component supplier was also lagging behind, so the whole product cycle had to be delayed for almost one year. All Motorola could do was lower the price of their phones in order to compete. It worked well at first, but by the beginning of 2007 the newly released RIZRs, KRZRs, Qs and ROKRs for that year were delayed almost six months. 

Everyone was expecting these phones to be huge, given the fact that the last three years had been stunning for them. But 2007’s first six months, weren’t that great. They kept selling dozens of millions of RAZRs as always, yet sales from others were cooling off, and the competition was harder every single day. But they weren’t worried at all. In the meantime, they put all their efforts into building the successor of this famous phone, the RAZR2.

Will the RAZR2 succeed? We will find out in part II.