Motorola announced last month that it wants to sell its mobile phone unit, which is ranked third in global market share, according to Engadget.
No one’s buying. This month, several companies including Samsung and Dell have announced that they are not interested in laying out US$9 to 12 billion for the business.
It’s a bit of a shock. The Motorola brand name is well known, and the company has remained competitive. Certainly some up-and-coming manufacturer would want that nameplate! It’s the kind of play that made sense a few years ago, when Chinese manufacturer Lenovo purchased IBM’s personal computer business, including the ThinkPad name.
Motorola executives backpedaled last week at the Mobile World Congress, announcing that the company remains committed to the mobile handset industry.
Last Monday, Microsoft purchased Danger, the developer of T-Mobile’s Sidekick line. Om Malik estimated that Microsoft paid US$500 million for a mobile handset line that has a decent market share among the under-30 crowd.
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Like you said, this would have made sense in 2004, when Moto dropped the best selling, handset in the world, the RAZR.
Then… they released one for every carrier, and that went over well.
Then… they released like 50 different versions of it.
Then came the Moto ROKR, signaling the beginning of the end.
Then the shoddy quality of the remaining releases in the line (PEBL, etc.)
Then the whole mess with the Sidekick Slide battery. Moto’s fall from grace is only equaled in utter crappitude by Chevy Chase’s fall from superstardom.
Fletch = original StarTAC
Both are great works of art, ahead of it’s time, still pined for (as is evident by Kevin Smith trying to get the Fletch franchise going again) and, unfortunately, can never be duplicated.
Moto fell off hard, but if someone can revive them the same way Lenovo redid the ThinkPad, then there’s hope for them still.
Motorola has dropped far too many balls lately. Their design team can do good work, but their marketing people are a liability.
Apple had a good idea – make one version of the iPhone.
Motorola tried to please every carrier in every possible way. Now the carriers cannot give Motorola phones away.
Are they still talking up Zach Braff for the Fletch reboot? At this rate, they may as well cast Zac Efron as our favorite investigative reporter.
From today’sBusiness Week: if Motorola cannot sell its mobile handset business, the only alternative is to keep the unit and fix it. Time’s a-wasting.
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