Motorola

Motorola Inc.

Motorola logo
Company type	Public (NYSE: MOT)
Industry	Telecommunications
Founded	1928
Founder	Paul Galvin
Headquarters	Schaumburg, Illinois, USA
Key people	Edward Zander, CEO & Chairman
Products	Embedded systems Microprocessors Mobile phones Two-Way radios Networking Systems
Revenue	$41.2 billion USD (2006)
Net income	$4.578 billion USD (2005)
Number of employees	66,000 (12/2006)
Website	www.motorola.com

Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) 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 Joe Galvin came up with the name Motorola when their company started manufacturing car radios. A number of early companies making phonographs, radios, and other audio equipment in the early 20th century used the suffix "-ola," the most famous being Victrola; RCA made a "radiola"; there was also a company that made jukeboxes called Rock-Ola, and a film editing device called a Moviola. The Motorola prefix "motor-" was chosen because the company's initial focus was in automotive electronics. 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). Motorola 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 cell phones, laptops, mac processors, and radio communication devices. Motorolas KRAZR line sold over a 110 million units and pushed the company to the number two mobile phone slot in 2005 (Nr 1 Nokia). The RAZR became a cult phone and many variations were produced.

Spinoffs

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 1990s. While the technology was proven to work, Iridium failed to attract sufficient customers and they filed for bankruptcy in 1999. Obligations to Motorola and loss of expected revenue caused Motorola to spin off the ON Semiconductor (ONNN) business August 4, 1999, 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 6, 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.

Ratings from interest groups

Motorola received a 100% rating on the Corporate Equality Index released by the Human Rights Campaign in 2004[1], 2005 [2] and 2006[3] , starting in the third year of the report.

Kansas City Gold Wireless

Recently Motorola has ventured off to start a wireless phone service with Bradford Mobile Phones, and Kansas City Gold. This whole idea was started by CEO of Kansas City Gold Wireless, Bryce Charles Bradford. He wanted to start a quality wireless phone serice with great phones without the nagging gotcha's that the other phone companies do.

Trivia

• Motorola was generally known as Ma Batwings to the radio industry, a not-necessarily-complimentary reference to the Ma Bell moniker of the Bell System. In each case, the nickname refers to the dominant position in their respective industries.
• Motorola pioneered the use of sub-audible tones (trademarked as Private Line by Motorola) to control radio equipment. The most common use of these tones is to open the squelch of radios when a certain tone is received, so that users don't have to listen to all of the traffic on their frequency, listening for their own callsign. The most popular use of "subaud" tones in ham radio is to close retransmission systems to any radio not sending the appropriate tone.
• Motorola commercial, military and public safety radio equipment uses microphones and speakers of impedance values different than the products of nearly all other manufacturers, as a means of discouraging third-party manufacturers of earplugs, remote microphones, etc.
• Many ham radio mountaintop repeater systems operate Motorola radios which have been in 24-hour-per-day service, 7 days per week, since the 1960s.
• In the 1970s, at the height of the Quadraphonic audio boom, Motorola manufactured chipsets and semiconductors for Demodulators and Decoders in home audio receivers, by a variety of different audio manufacturers.

See also

• List of Motorola products

External links

• Motorola official website