Goodbye Moto

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/section/goodbye-moto

by paralelogram • 11 years ago

237 94 11 years ago

Separate to the story, the "audio narration" option here is really cool. I could see this being a great way to increase engagement for certain types of reader/listener (certainly more so than the weird scrolling nonsense some news sites are trying).

tootie• 11 years ago

The NY Times and Bloomberg have been pushing these interactive articles. I think the genesis was probably the Boston Globe and their Big Picture articles.

ams61104• 11 years ago

I found the cartoon format odd for a publication like Crain's. I remember them as a "serious" business publication but it's been many years since I really paid them any attention.

I didn't really mind reading it, though.

blueblob• 11 years ago

reminded me of fallout

M2Ys4U• 11 years ago

The BBC is also experimenting with this format[0], albeit sans voice narration.

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/taster/projects/hooked

tgb• 11 years ago

Cool, yes but on my tablet I can't access the article due to the pop-up covering it without any visible way to closer it.

JeremyBanks• 11 years ago

I see the message "Scroll or arrow down to keep reading.", but when I scroll or press down, nothing appears. I can't see any content. (Using Chrome. Nothing appears in the console. I selected "Audio Narration Off", if it makes a difference.)

davnicwil2• 11 years ago

Same here, totally broken on Chrome 43.0.2357.130 (Mac).

Also, it says it was published July 13th 2015 - that's 2 days from now :-)

nsgf• 11 years ago

Delete div node with id "blackScreen". (Right click -> Inspect Element)

gyc• 11 years ago

Same on Safari on Mac OS X.

cynwoody2• 11 years ago

Same on Mac OS X using both Chrome 43 and Firefox 39. However, it works fine on Ubuntu using Chrome 21.

pronoiac• 11 years ago

Huh.

1. In Chrome, the "Audio Narration Off" was offscreen. I had to resize the browser to hit that button. Then it wouldn't show any content.

2. It worked just fine on my iPad. So maybe try a mobile device instead.

cynwoody2• 11 years ago

I just tried it again on the Mac, this time with a shallow browser window. It worked. My previous window was close to 1600px high.

I noted earlier that it worked fine on Ubuntu using an old version of Chrome. That machine's monitor is 1360x768.

ams61104• 11 years ago

Seems like all the usual downfalls: innovators dilemma (sticking with analog mobile phones too long, being late on smartphones), arrogance based on past successes leading to a massive investment in a product nobody wants (Iridium), too many internal fiefdoms, etc.

go1979• 11 years ago

Motorola had J2ME-based programmable phones around the year 2000. I believe that was the first smartphone in the US. Back in the day, I developed a few apps and tried to release them for free. I was asked a few grand for the apps to be "certified" for release. The nerve! I moved onto other things in life but it was interesting how it played out and here we are today.

haddr3• 11 years ago

I remember trying to hack some application for Motorola Razr V3, but unfortunately, the J2ME apps needed to be signed in order to work, so I was quite dissapointed...

sampo• 11 years ago

too many internal fiefdoms

Also what killed Nokia

LargeCompanies• 11 years ago

In April 2013 Motorola invited my startup partner and I out to demo our new audio sync across multiple devices technology.

They talked about buying us potentially and we were crazy excited...

http://ryanspahn.com/my-google-NDA-experience.html

Twirrim• 11 years ago

Doesn't fit very well on firefox on a 1600x900 screen. I had to switch the browser to full screen mode (F11) to be able to see all the content on each slide.

Interesting story though :)

colindean• 11 years ago

It's almost unreadable on my 21:9 screen. So much at the bottom is cut off.

blu_jay• 11 years ago

Reinvention is nothing new for Motorola. For the past two summers, I've interned with Motorola Solutions at there facility in Plantation, Florida. My grandfather worked as a security guard there 35+ years ago and now I am there as a software dev. intern. It was strange, on my first day, a senior engineer told us interns that Motorola was in the strange transition from a "hardware company to a software company." There was a lot of talk and general anxiety in the air about where the company was headed. As this post mentioned, the fire and ideas seemed to be nonexistent. My mentor would tell me that it was our job to primarily focus on the radios and release upgrades over long time periods. Nothing was being built or researched, only maintained and slightly tweaked. There was neither passion nor excitement at the company. Towards the end of the internship, the company sold part of the business to Zebra technologies and with it some of the employees. Many physicists and electrical engineers were let go. The factory and learning center was shutdown and the company decided to sell the facility. We currently rent back a small portion.

Currently on the premises, there is a small Motorola Mobility office, whilst owned by Lenovo, still has a very Google feel when you look through their glass windows. There have been talks of various healthcare companies and even Magic Leap moving into the other vacant area we used to inhabit.

I still have hope in this company. I'm currently into the second internship and the gears are starting to move rapidly. I'm very happy to be working on some projects that I definitely see putting Motorola Solutions ahead of the game in public safety systems. And when I doubt if coming back from such a hit is possible, all I have to do is pull open my cubicle drawer and look at the pile of Motorola M6800's.

ansible• 11 years ago

I still have hope in this company.

That's good I suppose. But I've heard from people in Schaumburg that there are more layoffs coming. I know a guy who took a severance package, rather than wait it out.

Just saying... at least get your resume ready, and work out now who you'll want to use for references.

The Chicago area used to be a tech hub, especially with regards to telecom. It is shocking how much has changed in the last 15 years.

curiousjorge2• 11 years ago

I feel sad. My first cell phone was Motorolla Razr. It was great apart from the crappy J2ME OS but it was sturdy, long battery, could only use it to answer phones and type text messages.

I feel lucky to have bought this motorola moto g smart phone. It was way more value for the money it offered at. Everything works, much better than my old Galaxy Nexus.

It's kind unfair and harsh that the industry's early innovators could fall so quickly, as such is the case for Nokia.

I think that in this constantly cannabalizing industry, the lowest cost producer selling at cheapest prices will always end up driving incumbents out. Samsung is feeling the heat from Chinese companies because it failed to rebrand itself as an exclusive luxury product like Apple. Unfortunately the Android brand doesn't carry that brand premium, despite the fact that Galaxy phones are excellent in quality. But for Samsung, they are so big that even if they lost this smartphone market, they could continue to feed Korea from their numerous other industries. For Nokia and Motorola, they did not have the same luxury.

haddr3• 11 years ago

The Moto G smartphone is probably the best android you can get at the price they sell it. It is really sometimes better than other android phones that are priced double.

zanny• 11 years ago

I have my mother on a Moto G on freedompop, since she rarely uses her phone. So it was about $55 all things considered to get her on a $0 a month phone plan with a great Android device. Insane value.

ams61104• 11 years ago

I have a Moto G on Republic Wireless, on the Talk/Text+WiFi plan. For $10/month I can't imagine why I paid Verizon close to 10x that for years.

curiousjorge2• 11 years ago

Wow, good to know I'm not the only one appreciating the moto g. If it had slightly longer battery life it would be perfect but I'm not complaining for how much I paid which was roughly $199 CAD. Everything is butter smooth, durable & tough, I almost gave up on Android after my last Nexus phone but this one restored my faith. Pains me that all of the Motorolla services like tracking my phone in case it gets stolen and such will probably be shut down.

rhaps0dy• 11 years ago

I really don't know how it has such good value, did they sell it at a loss?

The only problem I've found on it is its lack of a gyroscope, and subsequent lack of ability to use the Cardboard.

awjr• 11 years ago

I bought a Moto G 2nd gen for my daughter last year. I dropped my phone recently and am desperately holding off for the Moto G 3rd gen being released in the next couple of weeks.

microtonal• 11 years ago

It used to be, but the 1GB RAM is really becoming a bottleneck, especially after the Lollipop update. The rumors are that the 2015 model will also have 1GB, which would be a capital mistake.

Anyway, you can nowadays get an Asus ZenFone 5 with 2GB RAM and 16 GB storage for nearly the same price as a Moto G in Europe.

Of course, no near-vanilla Android ;).

jfroma• 11 years ago

Never tried a G model but Moto X is the best phone I ever had. The 1gen is about 140 usd unlocked in amazon and it runs lollipop flawless and in some specs is superior to current iPhone not to mention that the software feels quite better.

I also think that the apps bundled by Motorola to android where all excellent. The first time I actually didn't want to uninstall these kind of thing.

I hope Motorola continue to produce things with this quality level.

magicalist2• 11 years ago

This ignores years of terrible phones between the Razr and the Moto G/X. For a while they even had the advantage that a large portion of the market treated Android and the Droid brand as synonymous. Not every mistake was entirely of their own making (their partnership with Verizon has seemed and still seems intent on ruining every bit of their reputation), but a large part of it was. It had almost nothing to do with cheaper Android devices undercutting them.

lern_too_spel• 11 years ago

The Droid brand is Verizon's. It just so happens that the most famous Droid branded phones, including the original, were manufactured by Motorola. I'm of the opinion that all Android phones on Verizon are terrible, Droid or otherwise, and have learned to stay away despite their superior network.

kolanos• 11 years ago

The Motorola Droid was an excellent entry into the Android phone market. I switched from the original Android phone, the HTC G1 and pretty much everything about the Droid was better. I hope Motorola survives as a smartphone manufacturer if only because I can't stand HTC/Samsung hardware.

david-given• 11 years ago

I was working onsite at the late, unlamented SEMC on some mobile phone software, and I was talking to someone about my PEBL. Lovely hardware, I said. Terrible software, I said. Painful-to-use UI where nothing is findable, it's slow, functionality is poor and it looks ugly, I said. Compare it with the Nokia 6310i, I said. I may have ranted a little.

Yes, he said. He had headed the team who wrote the software for the RAZR/PEBL line.

He cut me off after I started apologising, saying that he agreed with everything I had said. Motorola had subcontracted out development to the company he'd worked for, and had provided a detail specification as to exactly what they wanted. What they wanted was simply bad: every UI design misfeature was deliberately designed in. The team would raise bugs along the lines of 'navigating menus takes ages. There needs to be a way to jump directly to a menu item --- you know, like Nokia has' or 'even after weeks of using the product our testing team still get lost inside the settings menu', and they'd always be closed as Works As Intended. Nobody cared.

But the hardware was beautiful. Robust, excellent battery life, felt good in the hand, well made, lots of nice attention to detail --- the PEBL's magnetic latch was a masterpiece. If only they'd put the same care into the software stack.

gcb02• 11 years ago

the disconnection between hardware and software quality is what hold everyone back on mobile.

we need the PC revolution on mobile. badly.

silverlake• 11 years ago

I worked at Moto's software research lab at their peak. The company was filled with good electrical engineers who couldn't write code. Also Galvin was a terrible CEO. The DNA of the company couldn't adjust to consumer software (smartphones).

on_and_off• 11 years ago

Unfortunately the Android brand doesn't carry that brand premium, despite the fact that Galaxy phones are excellent in quality

The hardware is good (although it never really had a premium feel, even in the last version) but the software has always been Samsung's weak point. Samsung has been obsessed with crazy differentiation and putting in as many features as they could. They never tried to build a cohesive UX with their phones or even just to mitigate the performance impact of their customization.

So it is hard for me to really feel bad about Samsung.

ChrisNorstrom• 11 years ago

Motorolla, Blockbuster, Palm, etc... Every one of these companies "had it all" and "lost it all". When I was younger and heard the term, "If a business isn't growing it's dying" I thought it was stupid. I finally get it.

● If a business isn't diversifying its risks and assets it can lose them all. Similar to family trees, too few kids and a single war or natural disaster can wipe out the whole family and permanently end their branch of their family tree.

● Don't be afraid to pivot. Nintendo was originally a playing card company. Samsung was originally a trading company. Squaresoft was originally a power line construction company.

● Be your own competition. If a new product in the company destroys the old products, that's a good thing. The company still wins. When you are your own competitor weather you win or lose, you still win.

dragontamer2• 11 years ago

> Be your own competition. If a new product in the company destroys the old products, that's a good thing. The company still wins. When you are your own competitor weather you win or lose, you still win.

Did you read the part about internal fiefdoms competing for a single pool of research money? Turning your own company and your own workers against each other is the classic way of burning all of your human resources (Microsoft Stack Ranking, Fall of Motorola, Fall of Nokia...)

dredmorbius• 11 years ago

Some companies manage. 3M is probably the classic example. IBM and GE, arguably.

In biotech, a standard practice is to spin off development start-ups, then re-acquire them.

raverbashing5• 11 years ago

Ok, there are important subtleties there

You can't have your sectors compete by doing similar things.

At the same time, you have to float innovations up when they appear.

Competition has to mean empowerment, not bean-counting and tug-of-war

Microsoft could have invented the tablet, but of course the Windows division cut it off (there's an MS story about that which I can't find right now)

And the vision from above has to be clear and certain, otherwise you end with MS Surface, Zune, etc

Apple's product development is full of bumps and fights as well, but they listen to the innovators, not the naysayers or the people who think the iPad couldn't be shipped without an Office app

lnanek22• 11 years ago

Not working in Chrome on OSX. All I can see after choosing audio or no is "Scroll or arrow down to keep reading." and can't scroll down.

pimlottc• 11 years ago

Odd, worked for me on same.

vehementi• 11 years ago

Can't click the buttons in Chrome on Win7

edit: solved by making browser window very wide

agumonkey• 11 years ago

I didn't know how much I didn't know about Motorola. Crazy rollercoaster. I hope they manage to keep talent and ideas just enough to stay relevant and not become a reminiscing brand name on a tag.

dempseye• 11 years ago

Sorry, can't get past the weird scrolling.

raverbashing5• 11 years ago

My theory about why these big hardware companies went bust (Motorola, Siemens, Philips, etc):

- They never got software development right, they couldn't grow sw development beyond some basic ones for hardware

- They never got User Experience right. They never thought it was an issue, or they developed for engineers, not everyday people

- They don't think ahead of the curve, they don't treat their customers right (what about the Android upgrades from Motorola that were promised and not delivered)

Of course Android was developed outside of them, but they try to stick a "custom experience" there which is crap. They can't even do that one thing right.

abcd_f• 11 years ago

Siemens went bust? Don't smoke that again.

raverbashing5• 11 years ago

Where can I buy those Siemens mobile phones again?

You are aware about NSN, right? The one that was bought by Nokia

A lot of divisions sold and/or shutdown

I'm not googling it for you though.

minthd• 11 years ago

Sure they aren't software companies, but what about the "winner takes all" economy ? If that's true , it makes sense to see companies going bust.

currysausage2• 11 years ago

They never got User Experience right. They never thought it was an issue, or they developed for engineers, not everyday people

Not implying that you don't have a point; but as a matter of fact, Siemens was a pioneer in usability research of mobile phones. [1]

[1] http://www.hft.org/hft99/paper99/design/2_99.pdf

mseebach• 11 years ago

It's one thing to read a naval map, another thing entirely to captain a ship.

I distinctly recall Siemens phones of the early 2000s having crap UX, especially next to the Nokia 3310.

amelius• 11 years ago

I'm missing a part in the history, where they were making CPUs, like the 6502 and the 68000 series (both used in Apple products).

beagle3• 11 years ago

6502 was made by MOS Technology[0]. You're thinking of the 6800 family, which was, indeed, awesome - the 6809E powered the Dragon computer.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502

ams61104• 11 years ago

I first learned assembly language on a computer similar to this: http://www.computercloset.org/SmokeSignalChieftain.htm though it had a 6809 processor. School had a lab full of them. Completely stand-alone of course, to print you had to take a floppy disk over to the one machine that had an attached printer. Spent many late evenings there.

joezydeco• 11 years ago

Motorola's semiconductor division was pretty much skipped from this story, their success in this area wasn't relevant to the "how they didn't make the iPhone" angle.

Moto didn't make the 6502, but they made the 68000 line (original Mac series) and then created PowerPC in a joint venture with IBM.

Semiconductors were spun off in 2004 to become Freescale, which is now owned by NXP (Philips).

nvarsj• 11 years ago

Ed Zander and Co dismantled the entire research division (including the main facility near UIUC) in the name of cost savings and lean. Then he helped fund and develop the prototype for the iPhone (in joint effort with Apple). It's a case example of incompetency at the top level.

partiallogic• 11 years ago

Published from the future!

merb• 11 years ago

Hm... I remeber the Milestone days, they said it will support Flash. They even made lots of advertisment with their flash phone. However they never officially supported flash. Also the updates were pretty much delayed and while a author on xda could be way faster on bringing updates + a smoother feeling to the phone a company like motorola couldn't they announced phone by phone instead of focusing on a few and supporting them. Thats why most companies failed and thats why the iphone is so beloved. It's supported over a freak amount of time. Okai not every bug gets fixed fast, but that's more an internal issue. However on android the situation is really really bad. Too much fragmentation, too many companies that don't care about the software just more money.. (which apple of course do aswell but with their update policy they make their customers more happy than most other software vendors)

ziles88• 11 years ago

Only thing irritating is the constant comparisons to Apple, not just in this article but any article. If a company can't compete with Apple it's suddenly a weak company that the author suggested the employees should quit from to 'join a startup'.

This is asinine. Motorola has licensed deals with almost every American and Canadian police/government force. They basically own digital RF encryption. They have a foothold in this industry and it's not close, and they can't be pushed out. If I was an employee in their radio division I could really care less if they are involved in phones are not.

It's still a billion dollar company, what are we even saying 'bye' to?

iolothebard• 11 years ago

Hopefully to fucking websites like this one. Just write a damn article. Kudos on the portfolio addition though.

codewithcheese• 11 years ago

I enjoyed it, was something a bit different.

melling2• 11 years ago

"A billion dollar company"

Wasn't that Blackberry's line?

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ABBRY&ei=h3SiVanIKY...

Could have been Sun Microsytem's too.

I think they're saying bye to relevance and innovation. They're worth half as much as Tesla, for example.

atinoda-kestrel2• 11 years ago

Wasn't that Blackberry's line?

Yes, and years later BlackBerry is still around, with a CEO that's almost finished reversing the damage the previous ones caused.

I get your point, but still. Also, you seem to be conflating stock price with company success, health, etc. You shouldn't. Post 90s, they're pretty divorced from one another.

I think they're saying bye to relevance and innovation. They're worth half as much as Tesla, for example.

No, they're worth half as much as Tesla according to the stock market. There's a big difference.

rasz_pl• 11 years ago

Could have been Sun Microsytem's too.

Sun was actually in talks to buy Apple in ~1996 :)

ris• 11 years ago

This is somewhat offtopic, but...

If you continually have to tell your reader to "Scroll or arrow down to keep reading", something is wrong with the way you are presenting a webpage.

No matter how fashionable the techniques you're using are.

marvel_boy• 11 years ago

No company can survive third generation. Is a fact of life.

asmithmd1• 11 years ago

Yuengling beer is operated by the 5th generation and the 6th is being groomed to run it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuengling

A possible key to the family's longevity is that each successive generation buys the business from the previous generation and it is not gifted to them.

Grazester• 11 years ago

Just came in here to say that when I got my girl a Google Play edition Moto G I was jealous of it. I had a Nexus 4 but the Moto G's camera actually seem to take better pictures. Maybe that says more about the crappy Nexus 4 camera than it does the Moto G's. The Moto G also felt so much better in my hand.

I later when out and bought a Moto X with a broken screen on craigslist and bought a replacement screen on ebay. That is what I am currently using and I happy with it.

TheMagicHorsey2• 11 years ago

Companies are always rising and falling in America. That is a good thing.

Its very good to recap and learn from history, but lets not get too sentimental. Corporate failure isn't made of the same stuff as individual failure. Its not like one guy doing really well, then falling on hard times. The people that built the successful company were long gone. Then complacent people took over. Then frightened and unimaginative people followed. Then finally only those that could not find a place anywhere else were left.

arkitaip• 11 years ago

You honestly believe that all the thousands of people left at Motorola are the left overs? That's a cynical and very unproductive view.

TheMagicHorsey2• 11 years ago

It may sound harsh, but getting a Motorola job is no longer considered a top choice by engineering students. I don't even think they figure in the top twenty employers.

Many people at Motorola are excellent I'm sure. But for whatever reason, they don't have better options. There are many excellent unemployed people too. Employers don't have perfect information about these excellent workers ... that's the problem.

However, for whatever the reason ... the people at Motorola (not all of them, just most of them) are stuck there because they don't have an offer from a better company.

buggyend• 11 years ago

I am from India, & I still remember back in 1998, my uncle had a motorola pager http://goo.gl/Ziuy34. When i held the pager, it was cute & fun little device. If we think of communication back in the 90s, I wish the present would be same as the 90s. :)

Call the operator;say your message;& wait for the person to call you.

Goodbye Moto

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