Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) is an American, multinational, Fortune 100,[6] telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It is a manufacturer of wireless telephone handsets, and also designs and sells wireless network infrastructure equipment such as cellular transmission base stations and signal amplifiers. Motorola's home and broadcast network products include set-top boxes, digital video recorders, and network equipment used to enable video broadcasting, computer telephony, and high-definition television. Its business and government customers consist mainly of wireless voice and broadband systems used to build private networks and public safety communications systems like Astro and Dimetra. Motorola's handset division is now focusing on smartphones using Google's open-source Android mobile operating system. The first phone to use the newest version of Google's open source OS, Android 2.0, was released on November 2, 2009 as the Motorola Droid (the GSM version launched a month later, in Europe, as the Motorola Milestone).
HISTORY
Motorola started in
Chicago,
Illinois as
Galvin Manufacturing Corporation (at 847 West Harrison Street)
[7] in
1928, with its first product being a
battery eliminator. Paul Galvin purchased the patents to the automotive radio and acquired the rights to the trade name Motorola from
William Lear. The name Motorola was adopted in
1930, and the word has been used as a
trademark since the 1930s.
[8]Many of Motorola's Products have been
radio-related, starting with a
battery eliminator for radios, through the first
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 joined the company as director of research.
In 1943, Motorola went public and in 1947, the name changed to its present name. The present logo was introduced in 1955, it was designed by Zeke Ziner in late 1954. At this time, Motorola's main business was producing and selling televisions and radios.
In 1952, Motorola opened its first international subsidiary in
Toronto,
Canada to produce radios and televisions. In 1953, Motorola established the
Motorola Foundation to support leading universities in the United States.
In 1955, years after Motorola started its research and development laboratory in
Phoenix,
Arizona to research new solid-state technology, Motorola introduced the world's first commercial high-power
germanium-based
transistor.
Beginning in 1958 with
Explorer 1, Motorola provided radio equipment for most
NASA space-flights for decades including during the 1969 moon landing. A year later, it established a subsidiary to conduct licensing and manufacturing for international markets.
In 1960, Motorola introduced the world's first "large-screen" (19-inch), transistorized, cordless portable television.
In 1963, Motorola, which had very successfully begun making televisions in 1947 introduced the world's first truly rectangular color TV
picture tube which quickly became the
industry standard.
In 1969,
Neil Armstrong spoke the famous words "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" from the
Moon on a Motorola Radio.
[9]In 1974, Motorola sold its television business to the Japan-based parent company of
Panasonic.
In 1976, Motorola moved to its present headquarters in Schaumburg.
In September 1983, the firm made history when the U.S.
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the
DynaTAC 8000X telephone, the world's first-only commercial cellular device. By 1998, cellphones accounted for two-third's of Motorola's gross revenue.
[10] The company was also strong in
semiconductor technology, including
integrated circuits used in
computers. In particular, it is well known for the
68000 family of
microprocessors used in
Atari ST,
Commodore Amiga,
Color Computer, and
Apple Macintosh personal computers. The
PowerPC family was developed with
IBM and in a partnership with Apple (known as the
AIM alliance). Motorola also has a diverse line of communication products, including
satellitesystems,
digital cable boxes and
modems.
In 1986, Motorola invented the
Six Sigma quality improvement process. This became a global standard. In 1990,
General Instrument Corporation, which was later acquired by Motorola, proposed the first all-digital
HDTV standard. In the same year, the company introduced the Bravo numeric pager which became the world's best-selling pager.
In 1991, Motorola demonstrated the world's first working-prototype digital cellular system and phones using
GSM standard in
Hanover,
Germany. In 1994, Motorola introduced the world's first commercial digital radio system that combined paging, data and cellular communications and voice dispatch in a single radio network and handset. In 1995 Motorola introduced the world's first two-way
pager which allowed users to receive text messages and e-mail and reply with a standard response.
In 1998, Motorola was overtaken by
Nokia as the world's biggest seller of mobile phone handsets.
[9]On September 15, 1999, Motorola announced it would buy
General Instrument in an $11 billion stock swap. General Instrument had long been the No. 1 cable TV equipment provider, supplying cable operators with end-to-end hybrid fiber coax cable solutions. This meant that GI offers all cable TV transmission network components from the head-end to the fiber optic transmission nodes to the cable set-top boxes, now at the availability of Motorola.
In June 2000, Motorola and
Cisco supplied the world's first commercial
GPRS cellular network to
BT Cellnet in the
United Kingdom. The world's first GPRS cell phone was also developed by Motorola.
In 2003, Motorola introduced the world's first handset to combine a
Linux operating system and
Java technology with "full
PDA functionality".
In June 2006, Motorola acquired the world-class software platform (
AJAR) developed by the British company TTP Communications plc.
[11]In 2007, Motorola acquired Symbol Technologies, Inc. to provide products and systems for enterprise mobility solutions, including rugged mobile computing, advanced data capture and radio frequency identification (RFID).
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