The history of Motorola
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It has build technology that's been to the moon, it created some of the most iconic and beloved gadgets of the last century, and it has made it's fair share of costly mistakes.
Today we look back at the history of Motorola, the company that built the mobile phone as we know it today.
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Today, Motorola is known for phones, but back in the day, its ambitions were a lot more broad and the company cooked up loads of different types of tech.
Motorola made TVs at a time when television was only just becoming popular.
It made pagers for hospitals and it was Motorola's radio technology that relayed Neil Armstrong's first words from the moon landing.
That's one small step for man.
That was 1969, but the good times didn't stop rolling.
In 1973, Motorola debut it's dynatac system for portable phones.
Capable of beaming voices over the air and then into the regular telephone network, and vice versa.
All managed by central Motorola computer.
The company was keen to get it's mobile phone up and running but it wasn't until a decade later that the first commercial handheld mobile went on sail.
It was the Motorola Dynatac 8000X, an iconic product that established a decade long tradition of getting mobile phones confusing names with lots of numbers and letters.
The 8000 X weighed 2.5 pounds.
It was roughly 11 inches high.
And costs nearly 4,000 dollars, which is closer to 10,000 in today's money.
Oh, and you got 20 minutes of talk time before the battery died.
The Dynatak 8000X was nicknamed the brick for its unwieldy size.
And Motorola used it to build a stronghold of mobile dominance.
Mobiles like the MicroTAC and then later the StarTAC, which popularized the flip phone and could vibrate instead of ring, ensured Motorola remained the biggest phone maker in the world.
Finnish firm Nokia stole that crown in 1998, but Motorola stayed in the game, keeping competitive until in 2004 it revealed its masterpiece.
The RAZR B3.
[SOUND] Hello Moto.
The B3 was the thinnest phone around and it practically oozed cool from it's ultra slim frame.
Motorola sold 50 million in under two years.
But enjoyed other big launches too such as the Rocket E1 in 2005.
A partnership with Apple that put iTunes into a mobile phone.
Trouble was, the ROKR wasn't very good.
It was slow.
You could only store a 100 songs.
And it didn't look that nice.
Apple still wanted to make an iPod that was also a phone, but after the ROKR it decided to take matters into its own hands.
The iPhone was a seismic shift, catching out even high fliers like Nokia and Blackberry.
[UNKNOWN], but it's arrival highlighted a problem at Motorola.
Namely that the firm had been riding the success of the Razor too long.
Facing intense competition, Motorola went years without a hit and lost billions of dollars.
Despite eventually getting it back together and [UNKNOWN] Producing some of the coolest early Android phones, and making some neat advancements in battery technology, 2011 saw the company split in two.
With the phone making parts soon purchased by Google and sold again in 2014, this time to Chinese tech company Lenovo.
Motorola's current standing is a far cry from the company that beamed down the moon landing, but there are reasons to be hopeful.
In the last few years, Motorola's built some of our Favorite smart phone, as well as a fantastic mobile at a low price.
It also managed to make a fairly decent smart watch using google's Android wear.
These are the generations you'll find in landmark products that have made Motorola Household name it is today but it's a step in the right direction.
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What do you think Motorola should do next?
Let me know and stay tuned to Cnet.
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