Motorola has transformed from one of the largest cell phone manufacturers in the world into one of the world’s most successful security manufacturers.
Key Details
- On June 5, Motorola appeared at No. 418 on the 2023 Fortune 500 list, in what amounts to one of the largest corporate turnarounds in history.
- Since 2008, the company has gradually pushed its phone production off to third parties while shifting its internal focus to producing body cameras, security cameras, communicators, automated surveillance, and command centers.
- The company is taking advantage of a growing market due to increased crime rates and increased demand for police accountability, Fortune reports.
- Many of their technologies function as prevention methods to catch and de-escalate situations before they happen.
- Motorola has seen continuous double-digit growth, saw $9 billion in sales last year, and saw $1.3 billion in earnings, and is expecting sales to increase to $10 billion this year.
Why It’s Important
Motorola was once famous as the first company in the world with a commercial cell phone, launching the product in 1973. In 2008, the company shifted gears into a new area of focus from its dwindling market share.
This set it apart from many of its competitors at the time, which attempted to stand still as the iPhone completely uprooted the smartphone market and became the industry leader overnight.
In the time since, its rivals Nokia, Ericsson, and BlackBerry have either diminished or ceased to exist, while Motorola now holds a $48 billion market cap and is an industry leader in security solutions.
The current CEO Greg Brown oversaw this transition, telling Fortune, “I knew from the first day I joined Motorola that the best part of the company was the part few cared about. Motorola could do a lot more by doing less.”