Motorola

Motorola is an American multinational enterprise specializing in telecommunications and related technologies. The company is headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, Illinois, and has used the name Motorola as its trademark since the 1930s.

Motorola was founded in 1928 by Paul and Joseph Galvin under the name Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. The company started out as a manufacturer and seller of car radios—or motorolas. The name Motorola came about as a creative compilation of the words motor and radiola, and was meant to suggest sound in motion. It became so popular that the corporation changed its name to Motorola, Inc., just a few years after it was established. Currently, the company produces and markets a wide variety of products, including but not limited to mobile phones, laptop computers, computer processors, and radio communication devices. Motorola caters its products and services not only to individual consumers but also to corporations, government entities, developers, and service providers. One of its most recent consumer products, Motorola RAZR, sold over 110 million units by the middle of the first decade of this century, propelling the company to the number two mobile-phone producer slot, behind Finnish multinational giant Nokia.

In general, Motorola positions itself as a company that thrives on “engineering intelligence with style.” The company especially emphasizes its customer orientation in the opening statement, which reflects both Motorolas vision and mission, posted on the company's Web site. It reads:

Throughout its existence, Motorola has experienced numerous ups and downs, related mainly to rapid changes in both the telecommunication industry and the external business environment; in the past several years, the company has been going through rather tough times. For instance, some of Motorola's large projects—like Iridium, a company that was aiming at creating the first truly global communication network—have been derailed due to miscalculated demand. Further declines in the telecommunication industry worldwide in 2001–03 forced Motorola to spin off its U.S. government-related business and its semiconductor product division into separate legal and business entities. The sales of its flagship product, the RAZR, also decreased immensely by the last quarter of 2006. These developments forced the company to begin major cost-cutting and restructuring [Page 1162]activities in 2007 that were mainly aimed at closures of various sites worldwide and sell-off of noncore business units. Overall, in 2007 Motorola reported a whopping 84 percent decrease in profits compared to a year before.

Motorola's current financial woes are continuing to worry company's investors. Despite solid sales of about $7.45 billion in the first quarter of 2008, the worldwide operations suffered a loss of $194 million. The company explains such an unfavorable figure by a 39 percent decrease in the sales of mobile devices. Motorola's other divisions, however, are once again showing strong financial results—both Home and Networks Mobility and Enterprise Mobility Solutions businesses continue to expand their solution portfolios and grow internationally. In another development in early spring 2008, Motorola's board of directors announced a split of the company into two separate publicly traded companies: Motorola Mobile Devices and Motorola Broadband & Mobility Solutions. The split is expected to be approved by regulators sometime in 2009.

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