Motorola cut in half! But still alive, and ready to live again Reports of Motorola's death (well, of the iconic brand at least) are looking premature, so calm down guys, you'll still get to see your batwings. Owner Lenovo has now said it will not only promote the "Moto" name (please note, not the cumbersome four syllable mouthful of "Motorola"), but also retain the iconic batwings logo, …
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I had worked with (not for) Motorola about 15 years ago. Management was the ultimate study of The Peter Principle ("managers rise to their level of incompetence") and they were more concerned with looking important than actually putting out products that people wanted. Overhead expenses were through the roof with lavish dinners and First Class airfares. Management retreats to Hawaii would wipe out an entire R&D budget for the year.
The management atmosphere was toxic - you could create nine successful products and one dud, and your co-workers would tear you apart for the dud. The result was marketing malaise where there were endless marketing studies done but no leading-edge products produced. Somebody should make a movie.
Once, while chatting to an IBM engineer while we desperately tried to figure out why a System/36 point-blank refused to talk to the outside world, he related to me the tale of the oddest callout he ever went to.
While the customer had provided the IBM feature code for the faulty machine, they could not identify it on their systems. He got sent out anyway. To a butcher's shop.
The feature code was absolutely correct but as IBM had not manufactured bacon slicers for many years it was no longer in the system(!) To cap it all, on being told that they no longer did that sort of thing the customer produced the extended warranty that he'd been religiously renewing every year[1], as had his father before him(!!)
I now wonder if it had that logo on it.
[1] Apparently inflation and decimalisation had not been kind to the premium charged.
If they want to continue they really should sort out their customer service.
Support staff have no order tracking info and just repeat the same script ad nauseum. Buy something direct seems to be a lottery when you'll receive it as delivery dates are a work of fiction.
Got a complaint? Their complains are ONLY handled by snail mail to a PO box which to me seems a relic from pre internet days and about as much use as turning my complaint into a paper plane and throwing it out the window.
Nice products but terrible service.
Did they make record players for cars before they got into car radios?
I'm thinking car radios in the valve era (tubes) was their first thing... then later mobile two way radio, semiconductors etc.
Like HP, the current Motorola brand has not much in common with the original.
Philips oddly are back doing what they did before radio: light bulbs.
The Motorola Mobility (Infrastructure) is gone too I think to Nokia Networks (despite not making phones, Nokia is still a big company. Who knows if they will make toilet paper, rubber boots, TVs or Set-boxes next year? :) )
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