How The RAZR Cut Motorola

Not long ago Motorola dominated the US and world handset markets. The name alone seemed synonomous with cell phones and pagers, and even as a child I have fond memories of playing cops and robbers with my Motorola "walkie talkies". Anybody else remember those things? Now, Nokia dominates market share worldwide, and Samsung is a distant number 2. So what happened to the once mighty Motorola? I think their most recent struggles can be summed up by one word, albeit a misspelled one: RAZR. When the Motorola RAZR debuted in 2004 it was among the hottest properties in any industry. The design was unlike anything we'd seen before in a cell phone. Instead of the bulky styles we had all become accustomed to, the RAZR introduced a sleek design that actually looked sci-fi and cool. It was something you wanted to be seen carrying. The introductory price was $599 to $699 with no contract and it quickly became the must have item of the year. Motorola was back on top, but this success would be short lived.

Motorola made the huge mistake of devaluing the hot property that was the Moto RAZR. They did this in a couple of ways. It was selling extremely well, but they wanted to cash in by getting this phone into the hands of more people. Obviously for this to happen the price had to come down, but in order to lower the price Motorola had to first find a way to decrease production costs. Lower production costs did lead to a cheaper RAZR, but it also resulted in more defective units being sold. Some will have you believe that because the RAZR sold so well it stands to reason that there would be more defects reported. While this does hold some merit, I sold this phone for several years and to be honest it was my most troublesome, and most returned handset in my inventory. Motorola should have taken a cue from Nokia and the way it handles it's N Series line of phones. You will not find a Nokia N Series sold for peanuts, and having owned 4 different models I can say with some level authority that they are very well put together units.

Other than being made by Motorola can you guess what these handsets have in common? PEBL. KRZR. ROKR. RIZR. SLVR. W490. They all share striking design similarities to the RAZR. The W490 with it's strange name bears the most resemblance to the once iconic RAZR, and coming in at $19.99 with a 2 year contract it is priced for the masses. If you want to make sure your once hot item becomes just another cell phone on the shelf, take bits and pieces of it and use them in your other line of phones over and over again! Such a lack of originality on Motorola's part has had more to do with them sinking than anything their competitors have done. Is it too late for Motorola to regain the prominence it enjoyed years ago? Things aren't looking very good, but as a member of the OHA who knows? Stranger things have happened.