Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been radio-related communication equipment such as two-way radios, consumer walkie-talkies, cellular infrastructure, mobile phones, satellite communicators, pagers, as well as cable modems and semiconductors. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, Motorola was split into two independent public companies: Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility, on January 4, 2011.
Motorola designed and sold wireless network equipment such as cellular transmission base stations and signal amplifiers. Its business and government customers consisted mainly of wireless voice and broadband systems, and public safety communications systems like Astro and Dimetra. Motorola's home and broadcast network products included set-top boxes, digital video recorders, and network equipment used to enable video broadcasting, computer telephony, and high-definition television. These businesses, except for set-top boxes and cable modems, became part of Motorola Solutions after the split of Motorola in 2011.
Motorola's wireless telephone handset division was a pioneer in cellular telephones. Also known as the Personal Communication Sector prior to 2004, it pioneered the "mobile phone" with the first truly mobile "brick phone" DynaTAC, "flip phone" with the MicroTAC as well as the "clam phone" with the StarTAC in the mid-1990s. It had staged a resurgence by the mid-2000s with the RAZR, but lost market share in the second half of that decade, as the company's one-hit wonders were not enough to reinstate Motorola as a leader. Later it focused on smartphones using Google's Android mobile operating system, the first released product being Motorola Droid in 2009. The handset division was later spun off into Motorola Mobility.
History
Motorola was founded in Chicago, Illinois, as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in 1928 to make a battery eliminator.Paul Galvin wanted a brand name for Galvin Manufacturing Corporation's new car radio, and created the name "Motorola" by linking "motor" with "ola", which was also a popular ending for many companies at the time, e.g. Moviola, Crayola. The company sold its first Motorola branded radio on June 23, 1930, to Herbert C. Wall of Fort Wayne, Indiana, for $30. The Motorola brand name became so well known that Galvin Manufacturing Corporation later changed its name to Motorola, Inc., in 1947.
Galvin Manufacturing Corporation began selling Motorola car-radio receivers to police departments and municipalities in November 1930. The company's first public safety customers included the Village of River Forest, Village of Bellwood Police Department, City of Evanston Police, Illinois State Highway Police, and Cook County Police.
Many of Motorola's products have been radio-related, starting with a battery eliminator for battery powered radios, through the first handheld walkie-talkie in the world in 1940, defense electronics, cellular infrastructure equipment, and mobile phone manufacturing. In the same year, the company built its research and development program with Dan Noble, a pioneer in FM radio and semiconductor technologies, who joined the company as director of research. The company produced the hand-held AM SCR-536 radio during World War II, which was vital to Allied communication. Motorola ranked 94th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.
Motorola went public in 1943, and became Motorola, Inc. in 1947. At that time Motorola's main business was producing and selling televisions and radios.
Post World War II
The last plant was listed in Quincy, Illinois at 1400 North 30th Street where 1,200 employees made radio assemblies for both homes and automobiles.In 1969, Neil Armstrong spoke the famous words "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" from the Moon on a Motorola transceiver.
In 1973, Motorola demonstrated the first hand-held portable telephone.
In 1974, Motorola introduced its first microprocessor, the 8-bit MC6800, used in automotive, computing and video game applications. The 6800 was the basis for the more popular MOS Technology 6502 which was made by former Motorola employees. That same year, Motorola sold its television business to the Japan-based Matsushita – the parent company of Panasonic.
In 1980, Motorola's next generation 32-bit microprocessor, the MC68000, led the wave of technologies that spurred the computing revolution in 1984, powering devices from companies such as Apple, Commodore, Atari, Sun, and Hewlett-Packard.
In September 1983, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved the DynaTAC 8000X telephone, the world's first commercial cellular device. By 1998, cell phones accounted for two thirds of Motorola's gross revenue.
In 1986 Motorola acquired Storno resulting in a whole new range of innovative communication products for the new owner, including the NMT, an automatic cellular phone system, and made Motorola a more central player in the early stages of the GSM standardization process in 1987. With this addition Motorola strengthened its position in Europe significantly. As Motorola's European development arm, Storno developed a GSM terminal in 1992.
On January 29, 1988, Motorola sold its Arcade, New York, facility and automotive alternators, electromechanical speedometers and tachometers products to Prestolite Electric.
In 1993, Motorola acquired Indala, entering the access control industry like badge and badge readers. The Assa Abloy subsidiary HID Global acquired India from Motorola in late 2001.
In 1996, Motorola released the Motorola StarMax, which was a Macintosh clone that was licensed by Apple and it came with System 7. However, with the return of Steve Jobs to Apple in 1997, Apple released Mac OS 8. Because the clone makers' licenses were valid only for Apple's System 7 operating system, Apple's release of Mac OS 8 left the clone manufacturers unable to ship a current Mac OS version without negotiation with Apple. A heated telephone conversation between Jobs and then Motorola CEO Christopher Galvin resulted in the termination of Motorola's clone contract, the discontinuation of the Motorola StarMax, and the long-favored Apple being demoted to "just another customer" mainly for PowerPC CPUs. Apple did not want Motorola to limit the PowerPC CPU supply so as retaliation, Apple and IBM expelled Motorola from the AIM alliance and forced Motorola to stop producing any PowerPC CPUs, leaving IBM to make all future PowerPC CPUs. However, Motorola was later reinstated into the alliance in 1998.
Neglect of the emerging digital cellular standards led to Motorola's end as the dominant leader in mobile phone handsets in the second half of the 1990s. In 1996 it fell behind Ericsson in the growing market for digital phones in the U.S. In 1998, Motorola was overtaken by Nokia as the world's biggest seller of mobile phone handsets. The company was also struggling in microchips, cellular infrastructure equipment, and the Iridium satellite project that it had invested in. Motorola sold some businesses during this period, including in 1999 a portion of its semiconductor business—the Semiconductor Components Group -- and formed onsemi, whose headquarters were located in Phoenix, Arizona.
After 2000
By 2000, Motorola had shown signs of recovery from a long sustained period of decline. It was still, however, losing money on every handset sold, whereas Nokia was making large profits on each instead.In June 2000, Motorola and Cisco supplied the world's first commercial GPRS cellular network to BT Cellnet in the United Kingdom. Motorola also developed the world's first GPRS cell phone.
In August 2000, Motorola acquired Printrak International Inc. for $160 million. In doing so, Motorola not only acquired computer aided dispatch and related software, but also acquired Automated fingerprint identification system software. With recent acquisitions from that year, Motorola reached its peak employment of 150,000 employees worldwide. Two years later, employment would be at 93,000 due to layoffs and spinoffs.
The company's handset division began using the "Hello Moto" tagline in advertizing in 2002 which later also became a signature ringtone.
In June 2005, Motorola overtook the intellectual property of Sendo for $30,000 and paid £362,575 for the plant, machinery and equipment.
In June 2006, Motorola acquired the software platform developed by the British company TTP Communications plc. Later in 2006, the firm announced a music subscription service named iRadio. The technology came after a break in a partnership with Apple Computer. iRadio was to have many similarities with existing satellite radio services by offering live streams of commercial-free music content. Unlike satellite services, however, iRadio content would be downloaded via a broadband internet connection. However, iRadio was never commercially released.
Greg Brown became Motorola's chief executive officer in 2008. In October 2008, Motorola agreed to sell its Biometrics business to Safran, a French defense firm. Motorola's biometric business unit was headquartered in Anaheim, California. The deal closed in April 2009. The unit became part of Sagem Morpho, which was renamed MorphoTrak.
Split of Motorola
On March 26, 2008, Motorola's board of directors approved a split into two different publicly traded companies. This came after talk of selling the company to another corporation. These new companies would comprise the business units of Motorola Mobile Devices and Motorola Broadband & Mobility Solutions. Originally it was expected that this action would be approved by regulatory bodies and complete by mid-2009, but the split was delayed due to company restructuring problems and the 2008–2009 extreme economic downturn.On February 11, 2010, Motorola announced it would separate into two independent, publicly traded companies. The cell phone and cable television equipment businesses would spin off to form Motorola Mobility, while the remainder of Motorola, Inc., which comprised the government and enterprise equipment businesses, would become Motorola Solutions. The split was closed on January 4, 2011. Motorola Mobility was eventually acquired by Google on May 22, 2012. Google later sold Motorola Mobility's cable equipment business to Arris Group in December 2012, and Motorola Mobility itself to Lenovo on October 30, 2014.