Motorola

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Motorola Inc. is an American multinational communications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, a Chicago suburb.

History

Motorola started as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in 1928. The name Motorola was adopted in 1947, but the word had been used as a trademark since the 1930s. Founders Paul Galvin and Joseph Galvin came up with the name Motorola when the company started manufacturing car radios. He created the name “Motorola” to suggest sound in motion (from “motor” and the then-popular suffix “ola”). The Motorola brand name became so well-known that Galvin Manufacturing Corporation later changed its name to Motorola, Inc. Many of Motorola's products have been radio-related, starting with a battery eliminator for radios, through the first walkie-talkie in the world, defense electronics, cellular infrastructure equipment, and mobile phone manufacturing. The company was also strong in semiconductor technology, including integrated circuits used in computers. Motorola has been the main supplier for the microprocessors used in Commodore Amiga, Apple Macintosh and Power Macintosh personal computers. The chip used in the latter computers, the PowerPC family, was developed with IBM and in a partnership with Apple (known as the AIM alliance). Moto also has a diverse line of communication products, including satellite systems, digital cable boxes and modems.

Products

Motorola creates several different products for use of the government, public safety officials, business installments, and the general public. These products include Motorola mobile phones, laptops, computer processors, and radio communication devices. The Motorola RAZR line has sold over a 110 million units bringing the company to the number two mobile phone slot in 2005 (Nr 1 Nokia).

Spin-offs

Motorola developed the first truly global communication network using a set of 66 satellites. The business ambitions behind this project and the need for raising venture capital to fund the project led to the creation of the Iridium company in the late 1980s. While the technology was proven to work, Iridium failed to attract sufficient customers and they filed for bankruptcy in 1989. Obligations to Motorola and loss of expected revenue caused Motorola to spin off the ON Semiconductor (ONNN) business August 4, 1989, raising for Motorola of about $1.1 Billion.

Further declines in business during 2000 and 2001, caused Motorola to spin off its government and defense business to General Dynamics. The business deal closed September 2001. Thus GD Decision Systems was formed (and later merged with General Dynamics C4 Systems) from Motorola's Integrated Information Systems Group.

On October 16, 2003, Motorola announced that it would spin off its semiconductor product Sector into a separate company called Freescale Semiconductor, Inc.. The new company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on July 16th of the following year.

See also: List of Motorola products (including Freescale's semiconductors)

Quality systems

The Six Sigma quality system was developed at Motorola even though it became best known through its use by General Electric. It was created by engineer Bill Smith, under the direction of Bob Galvin (son of founder Paul Galvin) when he was running the company. Motorola University is one of many places that provide Six Sigma training.

Boom bust and slow recovery

Motorola's success with the RAZR projected the company into a position where it became a major force in the hand held market. Motorola cut handset prices in order to gain market share and though they shipped more units at the end of 2006 than ever before, their profit crashed in the final quarter Finding themselves too dependent on a single product that had become outdated, Motorola began a worldwide cost saving and restructuring exercise in 2007 leading to the closure of sites and the sell-off of non-core divisions (ECC Tempe Arizona to Emerson)

Motorola continues to experience troubles with its handset division, which experienced a $1.2 billion loss in the 4th Quarter of 2007 Analyst reports also indicated that Motorola's handset market share had slipped to 13% or less, down from 23% a year earlier. Overall, the company reported an 84% decrease in profit compared to a year earlier.

Ratings from interest groups

Motorola received a 100% rating on the Corporate Equality Index released by the Human Rights Campaign in 2004, 2005, and 2006, starting in the third year of the report.

References

External links

• Motorola official website

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Last updated on Tuesday March 11, 2008 at 11:39:33 PDT (GMT -0700)
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